Alun Michael: I beg to move,
	That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, as follows:
	Most Gracious Sovereign,
	We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom and Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament.
	I share this privilege with my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East (Rosemary McKenna). Her constituency makes Cardiff, South and Penarth sound curt, so I expect her to refer to the fact that my father's family hails from Llanrhaedr-ym-Mochnant, that my mother was brought up in Ty'n y Felin near Llanfachraeth and that I was born in Bryngwran.
	After years as a Minister speaking to an empty Chamber, it restores my confidence to have the enthusiastic attendance of so many colleagues and the rapt attention of those on both Front Benches. When I last spoke to an overflowing Chamber, both sides said that we were spending too much time on something that was not a priority for anyone. But they still poured in hour after hour, day after day, to debate the Hunting Bill. Thank goodness hunting has lost its political potency after most hunts discovered that they could have a good day's sport without needing to chase a wild animal.
	Speaking today is a particular pleasure at the start of a Session in which we celebrate the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Co-operative party—the fourth largest party in the Chamber. It will be a forward-looking celebration because the co-operative ideal is a political principle whose time has come, and that is my theme today. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was very far-sighted when he embedded co-operative principles in Labour's new clause IV, and they run like a golden thread through today's Queen's Speech. Global warming, international terrorism, globalisation, the pervasive presence of the internet and converged technology are political drivers that make co-operation—internationally, nationally and locally—the only alternative to chaos.
	Today, I am especially conscious of standing in the shoes of Cledwyn Hughes, one of my predecessors as Secretary of State for Wales, who moved the Loyal Address in 1978 for my predecessor, Jim Callaghan. As a new Member of Parliament in 1987, the first note I received was from Cledwyn. It read:
	"Croeso i bachgen arall o Ynys Mon! Tyrd I gael paned."
	Welcome to another boy from Anglesey! Come and have a cup of tea.
	As a boy, Cledwyn travelled to school by bus with my Uncle Bob, who used to say that both of them made it to the House of Commons—Cledwyn inside as Secretary of State for Wales, and Uncle Bob outside as the policeman on St. Stephen's entrance. Cledwyn was a lovely wise man, steeped in his local community, a passionate Welshman and above all a fighter for education, jobs and opportunity for "his" island. He was deeply proud when my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), who shares those characteristics, won the seat in 2001.
	Cledwyn would have applauded the fact that this Queen's Speech promises partnership with the Welsh Assembly, and to devolve power to local communities—a radical development of the way in which have devolved power to Scotland, Wales and London. I mention Wales, with a population of less than 3 million, and London, with a population of more than 7 million, because devolution is not about nationalism or the break-up of the United Kingdom, but about good governance, delivery and engagement. Working with my constituency's excellent Assembly Member, Lorraine Barrett, does not diminish my work as an MP. I can tell my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister that together we achieve more than we could achieve alone.
	At the Department of Trade and Industry, I worked closely with Rhodri Morgan to win six more years of European funding for Wales—delivered when my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister achieved agreement on the EU budget last December. They said that it could not be done. Our co-operation on objective 1 has enabled Wales to outperform many parts of the UK in recent economic growth.
	On Saturday, at Welsh Labour's conference, we agreed a vision for the future—radical, ambitious, confident and practical. What a contrast to the alternative: Conservatives, who opposed devolution, jumping into bed with nationalists who drag the Assembly down in pursuit of separatism. That is a marriage of inconvenience. Nothing unites them except hatred of Labour's success in inspiring progress for the people of Wales.
	However, the greatest privilege today is to be the 10th successive Labour MP to move this motion—the 10th successive warm-up act for my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. By the way, my diary is currently free, so I can offer to do the same for the next Prime Minister, in 2016.
	I hope that the Queen's Speech will not be talked down by those on the Opposition Benches. The public are more impressed when the Opposition give credit where it is due, and a lot of credit is due. Since 1997, we have had a golden age of radical domestic legislation: the minimum wage—delivered after 100 years of campaigning—laws promoting social inclusion, education, enterprise, justice, child welfare and much, much more.
	In my constituency, under the Conservatives a generation of young people were denied hope and opportunity, but since 1997, unemployment and long-term youth unemployment have both more than halved. Behind those statistics are individual young people standing tall, able to use their talents, able to be enterprising, able to have ambition.
	I remember my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister visiting Cardiff during the Labour leadership election in 1994. On the banks of Cardiff bay, I explained how the Cardiff bay barrage would transform the city. He looked puzzled, and said, "How can anybody oppose this?" Now Cardiff is exciting and confident as any city in Europe. It is good to celebrate that success today, in enterprise week.
	I also welcome the clear focus of the Queen's Speech on cutting crime and disorder in local communities. We should ignore the media nonsense about an antisocial behaviour order being seen as a badge of pride. For me, it is a badge of pride to have invented ASBOs. They work, so the Opposition, who oppose them nationally, fall over themselves to claim credit locally.
	The ASBO is a simple concept that addresses the fact that laws often fail to prevent what they forbid. Our courts may be good at deciding who stabbed the butler in the billiard room, but they fail to deal with a moving picture of disorder and petty crime, which destroys communities. So, on the civil burden of proof, we can now show that nuisance exists. We give the offender an ASBO saying, "Just stop it. Breach it, and the punishment will be swift and sure. But behave yourself and you'll hear no more." There is no conviction to reduce employment chances, and less nuisance for the neighbours. All it needs is the application of common sense by everyone.
	This process works, as long as everybody plays their part in following up ASBO breaches briskly, and I urge my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to put the Crown Prosecution Service in charge of the whole process, so that the benefits are delivered consistently everywhere.
	The Queen's Speech promises to protect victims, and I hope that the courts are listening, because since 2003 the Attorney-General has referred 341 lenient sentences to the Court of Appeal. In 231 of those cases, the sentence was increased. That is a 68 per cent. success rate, when it had to be shown that the sentence was not just "unduly lenient", but "unreasonably" so. That is not a politician's criticism of the judiciary; that is appeal judges saying that those sentences were not acceptable.
	In other cases, I want the courts to make more use of the community sentences that the Government have provided. In one project, I saw young women having drug treatment and bringing their babies with them, breaking the cycle of despair and drugs and prostitution. Common sense is— [Interruption.]

Alun Michael: I am grateful, Mr. Speaker.
	Common sense is needed to complement the co-operative approach that is at the heart of crime reduction partnerships, in order to deliver the genuine and long-held determination of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.
	The new challenge is e-crime. The UK has led the way in cutting dramatically the child abuse sites hosted in this country, through a co-operative approach involving business, police, children's charities and Government. We now need a fresh approach to e-crime in general, and I urge the Prime Minister to use the expertise among Members of Parliament as a resource to tackle those issues.
	The other side of that coin is information. I hope that both my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will accelerate the work of Directgov, which is now seen internationally as a model. People do not seek information in departmental silos, and we can go further, linking in the Starthere model to create a single democratic access point to information from Government, local services and the third sector, even for the digitally challenged. That sort of co-operation is essential to promote civil society.
	I am confident that the Government are on the right lines, and that I am pushing at an open door. I welcome the Chancellor's commitment to exploring the potential of co-operation and the wider third sector, ahead of the spending review. An excellent Treasury team is pursuing those issues. The real challenge is to embed an understanding of the third sector in the warp and weave of the whole Government machine.
	That is why I applaud the Prime Minister's decision to create the Office of the Third Sector. The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, North (Edward Miliband) has made a great start. He has shown respect to the independence of the third sector, and the sector has responded. I chair the Third Sector Network, which has brought together umbrella organisations from across social enterprise, voluntary and community organisations, trusts and the co-operative movement to work to identify common values. That builds on the pioneering work launched by the Prime Minister back in 1994. All those umbrella organisations will now have to carry back the debate to their memberships across the country.
	I am proud of what the Government have achieved. Working for this Prime Minister has been a privilege. The Queen's Speech shows that our determination to continue improving the lives of people in this country is undiminished. In today's Queen's Speech, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister gives us a clear mandate, which I would summarise as follows: be bold, be radical, be inclusive, be co-operative.

Rosemary McKenna: It is an honour and a privilege, not only for me but for my constituency, to be asked to second the Loyal Address. I must admit that it is a bit of a surprise. My understanding was that an experienced Back Bencher moved the motion and a young, up-and-coming MP seconded it. I have been called many things in this Chamber, some of them even complimentary, but "young" and "up-and-coming" were certainly not among them.
	I know that 60 is the new 30, but I did not think that that applied here. There is only a two-year gap between my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Alun Michael) and me, and I would prefer not to say which way the gap lies. I have been assured that asking me to second the Loyal Address is nothing to do with the recent legislation outlawing age discrimination, and that it was simply time for a change. Whatever the reason, I am incredibly honoured.
	It is also an honour to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth, who has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in the House. We share a Celtic background. We both came to Parliament after having been councillors in local government. He has five children and I have four, so the two of us, and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, are doing our bit to fund future pensions. We also share a belief in giving the people of Wales and Scotland a greater say in their own decisions within a strong United Kingdom. That has been one of this Government's most far-reaching and radical successful reforms.
	My family, I believe, is typical of the British family today. I had an Irish father and a Scottish mother. I have a brother-in-law of Italian origin. I have two English daughters-in-law, and I have three English grandchildren. They, and the families that came to make up the mix, are of the United Kingdom today. I believe that most people have no problem with saying that they are British, and Welsh, and Scottish, and English, and Irish—and I believe that the parties that want to separate us artificially have got it completely wrong.
	On the basis of my experience in Cumbernauld, I know that people want Members of Parliament, and politicians generally, who work hard and listen to them, and do not simply indulge in gesture politics. I joined the Labour party in 1967, when I moved from Glasgow—a city that I still love—and discovered that there was no child care provision. Within a few years, another young woman moved to the constituency and became active locally. We eventually went on to become chair and secretary of the constituency party. In 1979, Labour took what was then the parliamentary seat from the Scottish National party. Norman Hogg was elected, and later his successor. I went on to become leader and provost of the council, and the other young woman went on to a distinguished career in the voluntary sector. To our great delight, we were elected to Parliament together on the same day in 1997. I refer, of course, to my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire). Some Members find it difficult to tell the two of us apart, which we find highly amusing. We can only put it down to the fact that we are both wee, somewhat round, Scottish feisty women. If we include my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne), we can cause real chaos.
	It is a special honour for me to speak today, on the occasion of the Prime Minister's last Queen's Speech. Like many others here, I was elected on the day that he led our party to a landslide victory, and have benefited from his leadership in two elections. He has been the most successful leader of our party, and I believe that he will go on to be considered one of the most successful Prime Ministers we have ever had.
	One of the privileges of maturity is not being regarded as one of the "Gie's a job" tendency. I was amazed to find myself christened one of Blair's babes—although I must admit that I am not sure that that would survive the challenge of the Trade Descriptions Act, let alone the tough consumer protection legislation being introduced this year.
	Throughout my political life I have campaigned for equality of opportunity for all, high-quality affordable child care for working families and improved representation for women in politics. I am proud that in all those areas our Government have delivered. Any legislature must look like the people whom it represents. That was one of the reasons why I was delighted to be elected in 1997, when action by the Labour party gave us more black and ethnic minority Members, and more than 100 women in Parliament. Indeed, it is a fact that the very first achievement of this Labour Government was to install a coin-operated tights machine. Now that—as I am sure you will agree, Mr Speaker, as an occasional tights-wearer—is progress.
	Today, of course, is an honour not just for me but for the constituency of Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East. It is right in the heart of Scotland and it is made up of the villages that run along the Campsie hills—Banton, Croy, Queenzieburn, Twechar, Lennoxtown and Milton of Campsie—as well as part of the town of Kirkintilloch, which I share with the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), the town of Kilsyth and the new town of Cumbernauld. I see a bit of panic above me, so perhaps now would be a good time to assure the  Hansard writers that my notes are to hand.
	It is a constituency of contrasts, visually and culturally: the traditional villages and towns with their mining backgrounds, fiercely proud, with the beautiful backdrop of the hills, and the new town on the opposite hill, with its modern architecture, which is not always beautiful—but it is looking forward with great pride to the 50th anniversary of its creation next year.
	One of our new claims to fame is football. We have, of course, many different sporting successes in boxing—in which we have had world and European champions— gymnastics and wrestling, to name but three. At one end in Cumbernauld, we have the home of Clyde, whose exciting young team just failed to win the Challenge cup on penalties on Sunday. At the other end of the constituency at Lennoxtown, there is the new Celtic training ground, and in Twechar it is hoped to establish a football facility with that other great Glasgow team—Partick Thistle.
	I am immensely proud to represent all that. It is a constituency full of decent, hard-working families. It is the people and their sense of community that I see in every area, and that make it a great place to live and to work. I am proud that the Labour Government have played such a big role in improving life for my constituents and thousands like them through a stable economy, tax credits, full employment and superb education, delivered through the Labour-led Scottish Executive as well as North Lanarkshire and East Dunbartonshire councils. There is hope for the future, where nine years ago there was deep resentment, lack of opportunity, widespread poverty and unemployment.
	I am particularly pleased that the Queen's Speech contains measures to continue repaying our debt to the older generation, and perhaps as a pensioner I suppose I had better declare an interest here. I believe that the Bill to overhaul and to modernise the pension system, and especially to ensure a fairer deal for women, will be welcomed across the land. It will also re-establish the link with earnings; I am just old enough to remember the last time that was fashionable. It is another indication of how the Government are working hard to extend security, prosperity and opportunity for all. It was with the hope that I might deliver solid improvements such as that that I joined the Labour party 39 years ago.
	I doubt that our new young women MPs would encounter the kind of prejudice that those of us who came here in 1997 and before did. In my maiden speech, I told the House this true story: three new Scottish MPs went to view a flat and hailed a taxi to bring us back to the House of Commons—and the driver asked us, "Are you all the wives of MPs then?" He got his answer—and I doubt that he asked the question again. Even better, I doubt that anyone would ask that question today, and that in itself is a sign of progress.
	I am honoured to commend the Queen's Speech to the House.

David Cameron: Before I go on to comment on the proposer and seconder of the Gracious Speech, I wish to pay tribute to the four service men and women who were killed in Basra on Sunday, Lee Hopkins, Sharron Elliott, Ben Nowak and Jason Hylton. I also pay tribute to Jamie Hancock, who was killed in Basra last week. Our thoughts are with their families. They died serving our country and we honour their memory.
	I also pay tribute to those Members of the House who have left us since the last Gracious Speech. Patsy Calton lost her courageous fight with cancer shortly after the general election last year. In spite of her illness, she came back to the House to continue her work and none of us will forget her bravery in doing so. Rachel Squire will be sorely missed by Members on both sides of the House and by her constituents. I believe the whole House will miss Peter Law. As a Labour man for decades, he will be fondly remembered on the Government side of the House; for overturning one of the biggest Labour majorities in the whole country, in the seat of Michael Foot and Nye Bevan, he will be fondly remembered on this side.
	Since the last Gracious Speech, the House has lost two of its greatest champions in Eric Forth and Robin Cook. It was a measure of Robin Cook's effectiveness that, on this side, we can still remember his brilliant attack on the arms to Iraq issue, and who on the Government side of the House can forget his withering criticism of the decision to go to war in Iraq?
	My first job in Parliament was as Eric Forth's deputy. I remember being summoned to his office to find that while he was not there, a life-size cut-out of Elvis Presley was. One never knew quite what to expect with Eric. Once again, both sides of the House have cause to remember him. He had complete scorn for everything done by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor and only a little bit less than complete scorn for everything done by me. We will all miss him.
	Let me congratulate the proposer and the seconder of the Loyal Address on their speeches. I thought that the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Alun Michael) demonstrated some wonderful pronunciation that I will not even attempt to follow. He told us about the Co-operative party. The right hon. Gentleman will not have seen it, but at that moment the Prime Minister turned to look at him but his gaze fell on the Chancellor. I am not sure that the word "co-operative" was the first thing that came into the Prime Minister's head.
	Some have said, unfairly, that the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth lacks charisma. After his speech today, I say that I profoundly disagree. He may not actually look like it, but the right hon. Gentleman is the Labour party's answer to Tom Cruise; he is always being sent on mission impossible. The Prime Minister sent him to Wales as the Downing street choice for First Minister. Nobody told him that the job would self-destruct in about ten seconds. I think he was the first Minister in history whose resignation was announced by the Leader of the Opposition during Prime Minister's questions.
	No sooner had the right hon. Gentleman stepped free from the wreckage than he was sent on mission impossible II. As the countryside rose in revolt and anger and as hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets, he was made Minister for Rural Affairs. The right hon. Gentleman should take heart. He has always been called for when the Government have faced a crisis; I think, today, his career opportunities must be almost limitless.
	I also congratulate the seconder of the Loyal Address, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East (Rosemary McKenna). It was an excellent and witty speech, and an important one about the role of a Member of Parliament. It also passed two vital tests for me and the Prime Minister; it was on-message and it spoke about his legacy. The only trouble was that the message was that it was time for a change, with which I wholly agree, and the legacy was that we now have a tights machine in the House of Commons.
	I have done my research. The hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East is a staunch Blairite and I gather that her favourite album is "Saturday Night Fever". When the Chancellor takes over, for staunch Blairites like her "Staying Alive" will not just be a song on their iPod; it will be a daily challenge.  [ Interruption. ] It is good to see the Prime Minister and the Chancellor talking together; a good moment.
	The proposer and the seconder have upheld the traditions of the House and I congratulate them both.
	There are things in this Gracious Speech that we very much welcome; in fact, we proposed some of them. I am delighted that the Government are going to link the basic state pension to earnings; that is something that we had in our last manifesto. The Treasury has finally been forced to make the provision of statistics independent—again, a Conservative proposal. There is also the Climate Change Bill; that has been proposed over and over again by the Conservatives, and opposed by the Prime Minister. I am delighted that it is in the Queen's Speech. I hope that it will be a proper Bill, and not a watered-down Bill. Government have got to give a lead by setting a proper framework; that must mean an independent body with annual targets and an annual report from Government on its progress.
	Let me turn to foreign policy. I welcome the specific mention of Darfur in the Gracious Speech; the Prime Minister will be acutely aware that what is happening there is a political crisis and a humanitarian disaster, which is now crossing international borders. Much of our discussion on the Gracious Speech will inevitably be on Iraq and Afghanistan. I supported both actions, I support both democratically elected Governments, and I support the troops and the work that they are doing. What matters now is that, with our allies, we take the right actions to maximise the chances for stability and progress in both those countries.
	Having been to Afghanistan, I have seen for myself the extraordinary work that our troops are doing as part of a NATO operation—now involving 37 countries—that is backing a democratically elected Government, entrenching stability, ensuring development and thwarting the Taliban. Those are legitimate British interests, and I hope that the Prime Minister will tell the House in his speech today how those efforts will be better equipped and, with our allies, strategically reinforced.
	We have a profound interest in preventing Iraq from sliding further into bloodshed, and so does the wider world. The options are stark. Simply cutting and running would cause mayhem, but the prospect of an open-ended commitment serves neither Iraq's interests nor our own—and, anyway, it is simply not practical. There are no easy options. Militarily, we must do all that we can to build up the Iraqi army, and, diplomatically, we need to involve the regional powers.
	While there is merit in contact with Syria and Iran—after all, the whole point of diplomacy is to talk to countries well beyond the sphere of our traditional friends—it is on the moderate Arab Governments that our efforts should concentrate. Their support for stability in Iraq is what we most need, and the key to securing that support is a fresh and unremitting push to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict. I hope that the Prime Minister will press President Bush to use America's influence to the full to achieve that, as well as enlisting the support of Europe. Taking those steps and maximising stability is the right background for bringing our troops home, but we should not set an artificial timetable. I hope that the Prime Minister will be able to tell us today how he hopes to make progress towards achieving those goals.
	I also hope that, during the course of the coming Session, the Government will think again about how we can best ensure that the lessons are learned from that conflict. After the Falklands war, a committee of privy counsellors carried out that task in the Franks report; the same should happen again.
	On Northern Ireland, we back the efforts to restore power-sharing and devolution. We are clear that if that is going to succeed, Sinn Fein must support the police, the courts and the rule of law—and it can start by telling its supporters to co-operate with the police investigation into the brutal murder of Robert McCartney. When people look back at the Prime Minister's time in office, they will give him enormous credit for his unstinting efforts to bring peace in Northern Ireland.
	This will be the Prime Minister's last Gracious Speech; indeed, it will be the 13th time that the Prime Minister has taken part in a Queen's Speech debate as either Leader of the Opposition or Prime Minister. Many members of his party are, I know, relieved that he is going, but they are not half as relieved as we are. I have to say to the Prime Minister that I did check that he was going before I applied for the job.
	A couple of days ago, the Prime Minister and I were talking about his first response to a Gracious Speech of 12 years ago—yes, the Chancellor has been sitting where he is sitting now, scowling and waiting, for that long. I have read that speech from 1994, and so should the Prime Minister, because back then, when he was Leader of the Opposition, he said:
	"Millions of people are desperate for changes in the Child Support Agency",
	yet today, under his Government, that situation is more chaotic than ever. Twelve years ago, as Leader of the Opposition, he said that the pension system was a scandal, yet it is his Government who have taken from every pension fund in the country. Twelve years ago, as Leader of the Opposition, he said that the Government
	"are so riven by faction...that they cannot address the interests of the country".—[ Official Report, 16 November 1994; Vol. 250, c.14-15.]
	What better description could there be of our Government today?
	The tragedy of this Prime Minister is that he promised so much, and yet has delivered so little. The tragedy of this Queen's Speech is that all that his successor offers is more of the same: more laws on crime, yet violent crime up; more laws on health, yet hospitals closed; more laws on immigration, yet our borders still completely out of control. Every year, the same promises; every year, the same failures.
	The paradox of new Labour is that, 12 years on, the Prime Minister is still desperately looking for this legacy. Three massive majorities, a decade in power, 10 Gracious Speeches and 370 pieces of legislation, and the question that they have to answer is: why has so little been achieved? It is because they have put headlines above delivery; they believe in centralised power, not social responsibility; and all too often, they pass laws just to make political points, rather than to deliver real change.
	This Queen's Speech is no different. It is so repetitive and hollow that people feel they have heard it all before, and it is so depressing that they might think that the Chancellor had already taken over. The Labour party gave the game away when it said that it is all about smoking out the Opposition. That is what it said—it is not about keeping hospitals open or keeping the streets safe; it is about trying to keep a tired and discredited Labour party in power, and the truth is that it has failed to deliver.
	Nowhere is this failure to deliver more clear than in the two vital areas of health and crime. Nine years ago, the Prime Minister claimed that there were 24 hours to save the NHS, yet today, 20,000 jobs are being cut in the health service. The Government never had a clue how to reform the health service. They scrapped GP fundholding; now, they are bringing it back. They abolished the internal market; now, they are bringing it back.  [Interruption.] The Health Secretary shakes her head, but she is the one who said that the health service had its best ever year. We have had 16 Acts and nine reorganisations. Health authorities that were abolished are being brought back again. Community health councils were scrapped and patients forums were brought in; barely are they up and running when they are all being abolished.
	Morale has been sapped and money wasted, and deficits are at record levels. The chief medical officer tells us that in public health there are
	"declining numbers and inadequate recruitment, and budgets being raided to solve financial deficits".
	The Royal College of Nursing says that staff are being placed under intolerable and unsustainable pressure, and the chairman of the British Medical Association says that he is dismayed by what he calls the
	"incoherence of current Government policies".
	So much for 24 hours to save the NHS! All over the country, we are seeing departments closed, hospitals threatened and staff being sacked. To paraphrase a former leader of the Labour party, we have ended up with the grotesque chaos of a Labour Government—a Labour Government—scuttling around the country handing out redundancy notices to their own NHS staff. No wonder they are not trusted any more on the NHS.
	Failure on health is matched by failure on crime. After nine years, every part of our criminal justice system is in a shambles. The chairman of the Youth Justice Board—let us listen to him. He says that the juvenile system is in danger of meltdown. The chief inspector of prisons says that the system is approaching breaking point. The Lord Chancellor—the man in charge of the whole legal system—says that there is "general chaos". Even the Home Secretary says that the probation service is poor and mediocre, the immigration service is dysfunctional and the Home Office is not fit for purpose. Just today, we have found that Islamic extremists are apparently working in the immigration department. Hizb ut-Tahrir abandoned Egypt; in Britain, they seem to be running our immigration policy. Now, we have the extraordinary sight of the Chancellor and the Home Secretary squabbling about how best to make this the election-winning issue for Labour at the next election. If they think that they can win an election on this record, let us get on with it.
	We have had 50 Home Office Bills, some of which were completely contradictory. Let us take just one Act—the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000. Six years on, 110 provisions are not in force. Seventeen were repealed even before the Act was brought in, and another 39 have been repealed subsequently. The Government like to talk tough, but they have just been acting dumb. That is the story of this Government.

David Cameron: The Prime Minister will not be around to see this Queen's Speech through. There is going to be a new power in the land. We have been lucky to have a unique insight—I think that the Home Secretary will enjoy this—from one of Britain's leading character actors, Keith Allen, about what to expect. [Hon. Members: "Who?"] The House should wait and find out. Keith Allen is playing the sheriff of Nottingham in the BBC's new drama "Robin Hood". He describes his character as having a calculating political mind that will stop at nothing:
	"The sheriff is a sociopath...he sees himself as a future dictator of England...I've based him on Gordon Brown".
	The Chancellor should not be upset. He got booed at the music awards last night, but what is worse than that is that people were chanting, "Bring back Tony!" We should not expect anything different from the Chancellor. If the problem with the Government is short-term gimmicks, politically motivated laws and failed centralisation, the Chancellor is not the solution—he is the biggest part of the problem.  [ Interruption. ] Whatever happened to British day, when we were meant to put flagpoles on our lawns? It disappeared without a trace. What happened to the Chancellor's e-university, which was meant to link communities together? No one uses it. What happened to his national tour, which was launched with such fanfare? It never happened.
	Last December, the Chancellor promised us a comprehensive report on the financing of terror. I would have thought that Government Members would be interested in a report on the financing of terror. Almost a year later, nothing has happened. All those examples are typical hallmarks of the Chancellor. When it comes to centralisation, it is the Chancellor and the Treasury that have complicated the tax system, confused the benefits system and virtually bankrupted the pensions system.
	Today, the Government are promising action on immigration. We have now had 10 Gracious Speeches from the Government, and this is the fourth time that they have promised to tackled immigration, the fifth time that they have promised to tackle antisocial behaviour and the seventh time that they have promised to reform the House of Lords. All they are offering is more of the same, but nothing ever happens. People have heard it all before and they do not believe it anymore. All that we will get from the Chancellor is a darker shade of fail.

Tony Blair: Mr. Speaker, before I come to my speech, let me just say to the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), who talked about 12 years ago, that I remember 12 years ago; our economy had just been through two recessions caused by the Conservative Government. Today we have the strongest economy, the lowest unemployment, the lowest inflation and the lowest interest rates. I remember that, 12 years ago, we had thousands of people waiting 18 months, and that was just on an in-patient list. Now, we are on the way to an 18-week maximum target for in and out-patients. I remember that 12 years ago we had kids being taught in crumbling school buildings. I remember, 12 years ago, a Conservative Government who had doubled crime. He is talking about hope, but let me just tell him something about hope. Hope is not built on talking about sunshine, any more than antisocial behaviour is combated by "love". Hope is what a strong economy gives us; hope is what investment in the NHS and schools gives us. Hope means proper measures to tackle the long-term challenges. Hope, true hope, is about tough decision making, and the right hon. Gentleman has never taken a tough decision in his life. Now for my speech— [Interruption.] I may be going out, but on that performance, he is not coming in.
	Before I begin, and after that little interlude, I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me in sending—as the right hon. Gentleman did, very properly, at the beginning of his speech—our condolences to the families and friends of the five service personnel killed in Iraq in recent weeks: Kingsman Jamie Hancock, Warrant Officer Lee Hopkins, Staff Sergeant Sharron Elliott, Corporal Ben Nowak and Marine Jason Hylton. Our thoughts are also with the families of the three servicemen who were injured in Sunday's attack. They were doing an essential job for the security of Iraq and the wider world, and we owe them a profound debt of gratitude. Remembrance Sunday took on a special significance for the country at this time, in respect of our losses in Afghanistan and Iraq. Our thoughts and prayers are not just with the families of those who have fallen, but with all those who serve in our armed forces in difficult fields of conflict today.
	Mr. Speaker, obviously, I will join fully in the tributes to my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Alun Michael) and my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East (Rosemary McKenna), but before I do so, let me pay tribute to those Members of Parliament of all parties who have passed away since the last Queen's Speech, and I fully join in and endorse the tributes of the right hon. Member for Witney. Patsy Calton, Robin Cook, Rachel Squire, Peter Law and Eric Forth may not have had much in common in their political views, or indeed in their length of service in the House, but what they did all have in common was the high regard in which they were held, both by their constituents and by colleagues on all sides of the House.
	The House will, I hope, understand if I single out Robin Cook, however. Whatever our disagreements over Iraq, he was an extraordinary talent, a brilliant debater, a fearless and determined advocate of progressive causes and perhaps the greatest parliamentarian of his generation. He is still sorely missed.
	I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth and my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East for proposing and seconding the Queen's Speech. I think the Leader of the Opposition is right: there are probably few people to whom I owe more than my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth, having given him one hospital pass after another in the course of his very distinguished career. Indeed, given some of the tasks that he has been asked to perform on my behalf, if when the call came through from No. 10 he had refused to take it, it would have been understandable.
	First, my right hon. Friend did a difficult job in very difficult circumstances in respect of Wales. I pay tribute, too, to the tremendous skill, patience and, at times, personal courage with which he tried to find a way through the various difficulties in respect of the hunting ban, not least trying to persuade the Countryside Alliance that it would be not so bad. In addition, he did something that is really worth remembering—he mentioned it in his speech. I remember very well the occasion when he took me down to Cardiff bay and showed me the possibilities there. It was thanks to his vision and due to his work that Cardiff bay was developed in that way. The development has brought in hundreds of millions of pounds of investment and thousands of jobs, and he deserves tremendous credit for it.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East is, by comparison with my right hon. Friend, a relative newcomer to the House, but there is nothing recent about her record of fighting for Scotland and for devolution, which she has done throughout her political life. It was fitting that she made her maiden speech in the House during the debate on the Bill on referendums for a Scottish Parliament and a National Assembly for Wales, but as she rightly said, she has been equally determined about the representation of women in politics. I am sorry that she had to go through the indignity of being designated one of the Blair babes, but the other day I had a look at the photograph of us all in 1997 and if it is any consolation to her she has aged considerably better than me.
	The theme of the Queen's Speech is taking the long-term decisions necessary to give us security and opportunity in a rapidly changing world. Such pace of change is transforming the nature of the challenges we face—challenges for our economy through globalisation, for our environment through climate change, in respect of our security through terrorism and mass migration, and of our demography through an ageing population, which in a few years will have more people over the age of 64 than under the age of 16 for the first time in the country's history. This is also of course against the background of our continuing involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.
	Let me say on both those issues that the situation is obviously very difficult. There are immense challenges in both countries, but I believe that it is important that we hold firm, that we show strength, that we stand up to the forces both in Afghanistan and Iraq that are trying to prevent those countries from getting the democracy their people so obviously want.
	In respect of Iraq, it is important that we make sure there is a broad-based and non-sectarian Government and, as I explained the other night at the Lord Mayor's banquet, it is also important that we fill the gaps that there still are in the equipping, training and capability of the Iraqi armed forces. At present in Basra, for all the difficulties, an operation is going on that the British armed forces are supporting—the bomb the other day was designed to stop that operation working. The operation is being led by the Iraqi forces and they are doing it well, and it is of vital importance that our forces remain in support so that the proper authorities in Basra are in full control of the city.
	Whether in Iraq or Afghanistan, there are exactly the same issues in both countries: on one side, they are countries where after years of failed and brutally oppressive Governments they are trying to put a democracy on its feet; and on the other side, there are those who by terrorism are trying to destroy that possibility. As I have said on many occasions, our task is to stand firm with the democrats against the terrorists.

David Winnick: Does my right hon. Friend accept that the reason why opinion is moving away from our continued position in Iraq is that there seems to be no progress on security whatever? There is a feeling that next year, the year after or in many years to come, the position will remain the same as it is now. Is not there a case for an urgent reassessment of our position in that country, given the number of people who are being slaughtered daily and given that the occupation in no way prevents either that or the killing of our own armed forces personnel?

John Baron: I thank the Prime Minister for his generosity. Whilst I think most of us would accept, with regard to policy on Iraq, that it would be wrong to cut and run and that that would only compound the original error, does he not accept that it is not a sign of weakness or division for this House to properly debate the future of Iraq at a time when we are getting different messages from different policy makers, whether it is splitting the country up into three by the Foreign Secretary, enforcing a national compact by the President, or involving Iran and Syria? Will the Prime Minister now grant this House a full debate about the future of Iraq?

Tony Blair: First, let me make it clear—we do not want there to be any danger of people misunderstanding the Government's policy—Government policy is not to partition Iraq into three; that would be quite disastrous and the Foreign Secretary certainly did not say that. Secondly, let me just tell the hon. Gentleman that although he may regard removing Saddam Hussein as an error, I do not.
	In relation to climate change, the Stern review removed any lingering doubts about the threat that we face. It also added a new dimension: the costs of not intervening now vastly outweigh the costs of action. But we know that the only solution is, ultimately, through international action. That is why the G8 plus five initiative begun at Gleneagles is so pivotal in getting a strong and effective post-2012, post-Kyoto agreement soon. It is why the European trading system and co-operation in the European Union is also essential. The groundbreaking agreement that the United Kingdom has recently pioneered with the state of California shows that around the world—particularly, indeed, in the United States—the mood is shifting towards more radical action. It is right that we reflect that shift here.
	We are one of the few countries in the world to meet—in fact, to double—our Kyoto targets, and our leadership position on the issue is clear. We must retain it, but I have to say to the right hon. Member for Witney that we need to retain it whilst acting sensibly. After all, the UK is responsible for only 2 per cent. of total global emissions. If we shut down the whole of the UK's emissions—shut off all our electricity tomorrow—the growth in just China's emissions would eliminate the effect in less then two years. Without an international agreement, we will never make proper progress on this issue.
	The Bill that we propose will put in legislation a long-term UK target for emissions and it will establish, as we have said, an independent body, the carbon Committee, to work with the Government, and it will take further powers to implement the energy review. It will also include interim targets, but not annual targets. Let me explain to the right hon. Gentleman why we are against the prospect of annual targets, but that is not the only reason why it is important. It is important because climate change is not the only issue shaping energy policy. We also need energy security and for Britain in future, that will be essential.
	In 15 years we will move from a position of being about 80 or 90 per cent. self-supportive and not reliant on imports on account of our own self-sufficiency in oil and gas, to one in which we are importing 80 or 90 per cent. In those circumstances, and when we also lose about 15 per cent. of our electricity capability through the phasing out of nuclear power stations, I must tell the House that, in common with countries around the world, we need to put nuclear power back on the agenda and at least replace the nuclear energy that we will lose. Without it, we will not be able to meet either our objectives on climate change or our objectives on energy security.
	These are difficult and controversial decisions, but they are absolutely necessary. I have looked carefully at what the right hon. Member for Witney and his team have been suggesting on this issue. First, they suggested that we needed 3 per cent. annual targets. The shadow energy Minister said:
	"If the climate change Bill is to have teeth and be workable, it must be measurable. Unless we say that we want to achieve a 3 per cent. reduction in emissions year on year, the outcome will not be measurable."—[ Official Report, 30 October 2006; Vol. 451, c. 76.]
	Then the right hon. Member for Witney walked away from that and his shadow environment spokesman is apparently saying that what he actually wants is a "rolling programme of targets", which
	"would be adjusted mathematically according to the progress or otherwise we make".
	Let me explain it to the right hon. Gentleman. If we end up with an annual target—let us say of 3 per cent.—we could have a colder than usual winter, which would mean that emissions would go up. We would then be in a position where we simply could not meet the target, yet the right hon. Gentleman is suggesting that the target should have statutory authority so that the Government are obliged to carry it out. Let us suppose that the fuel price actually fell and that we had an increase in emissions as a result. Is the right hon. Gentleman really suggesting that we put back on the fuel duty escalator and raise the fuel duty? I doubt it.
	Let me go through the various positions that the right hon. Member for Witney has adopted on nuclear power. His industry spokesman said that from about "the age of 12", he had an "instinctive hostility" to "nuclear power". His shadow Chancellor said that he would be
	"happy to see nuclear power".
	The right hon. Gentleman himself said:
	"I'm neither dogmatically in favour of nuclear power, nor dogmatically against".
	 [Interruption.] What is my position? I am in favour of it. Is the right hon. Gentleman in favour of it? The right hon. Member for Witney asks me what my position is and I have said that I am in favour of it. What, then, is the right hon. Gentleman's position?  [Interruption.] It actually gets better. Let me read his position, which he gave just the other day in an interview in  Green Futures. He said:
	"I want to give every opportunity for green sources of energy to come through. If they do, well and good, if they don't, and we have to keep the lights on, then nuclear might come into the picture."
	So what is he going to do? He is the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Secretary comes in and says, "I am afraid the renewables haven't generated as much as we want. I am afraid we won't be able to keep the lights on." So what is the right hon. Gentleman going to say—"Rustle me up a nuclear power station"?

Tony Blair: The decommissioning costs have to be met in any event.  [ Interruption. ] We have nuclear power stations now, so we will have nuclear waste that we have to decommission. The point is that when, over the next few years, our nuclear powers stations are closed, are we at least going to replace them? I say yes. What does the Leader of the Opposition say? We do not know.
	Likewise, the other important long-term challenge is on pensions reform. The Turner report provides us with a good framework on pensions reform and we should implement it. In addition, by removing more people off benefit and into work, we are able to provide better welfare measures for our citizens.
	In addition to those measures of reform—I will come to law and order in a moment—there are, for example, the measures on bus travel. There will be free, off-peak local bus travel for all pensioners and disabled people. There will also be proposals to speed up and simplify the planning process, measures to facilitate greater flexibility and decision making in local government, measures on redress for consumers and, of course, measures on Northern Ireland. On Northern Ireland, I hope very much that we will be able to make the progress necessary to see the institutions up and running again.
	I would like to focus for a moment on those measures that relate to crime, migration and security. Again, the reason for further action is clear: the nature of crime is changing—antisocial behaviour, organised crime and terrorism. The traditional view of liberty and security, in our judgment, has to change. The right hon. Gentleman said in his speech—indeed, this is commonly said by those on the Opposition Front Bench—that laws are not the answer. Laws are not the whole answer, but I am afraid that they are part of the answer. The fact is that without antisocial behaviour legislation, we would never have been able to tackle the blight of antisocial behaviour in our constituencies. [Hon. Members: "You haven't."] Go a few miles from here to King's Cross and see the changes that have been made or visit the inner-city suburb in east Manchester that I saw the other day. We can go anywhere in the country where these powers are being used, where they are closing down the houses of crack dealers, putting antisocial behaviour orders on people and making sure that the new powers that the police have are used properly. If the Conservatives keep setting their face against antisocial behaviour legislation, they are completely out of touch with the needs of people in this country.
	In addition, there is the shifting of the emphasis from the offence to the offender. Again, through the additional legislation, we are able to take further the measures in relation to that, including the measures specifically on violent crime. There will be new ways of managing offenders through the National Offender Management Service, changes in sentencing and changes in the powers that we need to deal with organised crime.
	In relation to terrorism, the right hon. Gentleman again suggested that somehow we should be talking the language of hope and not fear, but there is no point in being unrealistic about this. We have a genuine, serious terrorist threat. This country faces it; other countries face it. We are not talking the politics of fear here. We are talking the politics of a realistic assessment of threat and the measures necessary to meet it. I hope that, this time, when we draw up the measures that are necessary to tackle this we get the support of the whole House. I am happy to work with him and his colleagues on this. It really would be the best message that we could send out to those who are engaged in inciting terrorism in our country.

Shailesh Vara: As regards terrorism, written answers from the Home Office have revealed that neither the Home Office nor the Metropolitan Police Service have any statistics on what day during detention terror suspects have been either released or charged. If it is the Government's intention to increase the period of detention, will the Prime Minister give an assurance to the House that he will produce proper evidence, not just soundbites and rhetoric, to justify an increase in detention periods?

Tony Blair: Let me tell the hon. Gentleman what the country will believe. The country will believe that when I first entered the House, I had 40 per cent. unemployment in parts of my constituency; now unemployment there is below the national average. The Government the hon. Gentleman used to support left people literally waiting and dying for their heart operations. The Government he used to support had people working for £1.50 an hour before we introduced the minimum wage. I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to remind people of that.
	What the Leader of the Opposition did today shows the difficulties that he has. When it is a question of attack, he can make the attack, but when it is a question of giving the alternative, he has no alternative to give. The truth of the matter is that he spends most of his time avoiding difficult decisions, but when he is forced to decide, he decides wrongly. Let us look, for example, at what he says about tax and spending, since that goes right to the heart of whether or not we run an effective economy.
	It used to be clear. The right hon. Gentleman said that he had a new fiscal rule that would "share the proceeds of growth", so there would be less spending than under the Labour Government. But I have been through the spending commitments that the right hon. Gentleman has made and I find that he has called for more spending on prisons, more on housing, more on schools, more on occupational therapy, more on drug rehabilitation, more on police, more on the intelligence services, more on charities, more nurses and health visitors, more for child care for parents, more for child care for grandparents, and more on post offices—billions more. Then comes the Tory tax commission that proposes £21 billion-worth of tax cuts. How does he make everything add up? He has his fiscal rule —[ Interruption. ]
	Let me give an example. Here is a quote from the Tory NHS campaign pack—how is this for clarity of policy? The question is:
	"Are you guaranteeing increased spending on the NHS?"
	The first line of the reply is:
	"We are not calling for further, immediate increases on NHS spending".
	Fair enough. The second line is:
	"We have made an unambiguous commitment to increase spending",
	and the third line is
	"We have made it clear that we will share the proceeds of growth between increased spending...and reducing tax".
	The fact is that trying to cut taxes and spend more with the same money is not sharing the proceeds of growth; it is sharing out the disaster of the recession that this country will face.

Stuart Bell: It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), who is the leader of the Liberal party. Last year, I followed his predecessor, who was kind enough to talk a little while on Europe. I note that on this occasion the right hon. and learned Gentleman has not mentioned Europe. Instead, he mentioned nuclear energy and his party's opposition to that. The one way to frighten any audience is to tell them that, in 20 years, when they put their hand out to turn on a light, there will be no electricity. One may also tell them that, if they wish to display a museum piece, they may show their car in the garage.
	As the Prime Minister said in response to the Leader of the Opposition, it is no use waiting until our energy supplies, either home grown or from abroad, are no longer there to start looking at nuclear energy. Every industrial country is now looking at returning to nuclear energy. Seventy per cent. of France's energy is nuclear. We will have to come to that debate and to make a decision that is based on the national interest. I hope that, when that time comes, both the official Opposition and the Liberal party will look at their position again in the interests of all our people in the future.
	The right hon. and learned Gentleman mentioned foreign affairs, which I expected him to do, and he was somewhat critical of the Prime Minister's foreign affairs policy. I am sure that he read the Prime Minister's speech in Los Angeles in July and his speech at Mansion house. He was clear as to what the foreign policy of this country should be and it is referred to in the Queen's Speech: an alliance between the United States of America and the European Union, an alliance of peoples from the Pacific ocean to, broadly, the Urals, an alliance of people who share values, have a shared democracy and value democracy.
	When the right hon. and learned Gentleman talks about Iraq, I am sure that he will not forget that 12 million people voted in those Iraqi elections. There have been elections in the Congo and in Palestine. There is a movement in the Gulf towards democracy, and that principle of democracy should be the principle that links the United States of America and the European Union. I would like to see that link strengthened, as is mentioned in the Queen's Speech.
	When the leader of the Liberal party talks about Iraq, he never talks about the no-fly zones. He never talks about our pilots who risked their lives day in, day out to defend the Kurds in the north and Shi'ites in the south. He never talks about the Marsh Arabs who lost their homes when the marshes were drained. He never talks about the 2 million people—at least—who lost their lives under Saddam Hussein in a war with Iran. He never talks about the daily executions that went on within that regime, and he does not say what the British Government should have done. He voted against the war but what was his solution to the problem of Saddam Hussein in the Gulf? He did not have a solution then and he does not have one now. He talks of drift and hopelessness. He never talks of the two provinces in the south that we have given back to the Iraqis. He does not talk about the professionalism of the British Army in the south or the job that we are doing.

Stuart Bell: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to answer that point, which was touched on last week by the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), who criticised the Prime Minister for not participating in the assessment in the United States. He made a perfectly valid and pertinent point with which I agree.  [Interruption.] He did so on the Floor of the House; the hon. Gentleman can look it up in  Hansard. The point is this: it would be very odd if the Baker commission, to use that word, was having an assessment of future policy in Iraq and our Prime Minister sat waiting to hear what was said and did not participate in the debate.
	There is a world of difference—the Leader of the Opposition touched on it today when he talked about the inquiry that took place after the Falkland Islands war—between a parliamentary inquiry after the event, when our troops have been withdrawn from Iraq and it is in a stable condition, and participating in an assessment. What the Prime Minister said in that video link—he repeated it today, and the Foreign Secretary has said it—is that it would not be the right approach to go for the partition of Iraq. I am glad to see the right hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) in his place; the partition in Ireland led to 80 years of dispute and violence, and that is what would happen in Iraq. It is quite right for the Prime Minister to advise the commission that this ought not to take place.
	The right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife also mentioned Israel and Palestine, and the Oslo agreement. When that agreement was signed, I moved a motion at the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Delhi, congratulating the parties to that and on trying to create a two-state solution in respect of Palestine. Unfortunately, that did not come about. It is worth working for, and as the Prime Minister and the Queen's Speech have suggested that we should be working with the United States and Europe, it would be useful as a platform to have those two democracies—the European Union and the United States—coming together in an effort to create a two-state situation in Palestine and Israel.
	Having responded to the points of the Liberal leader in as emollient a tone as I could manage, I now wish to refer to the Loyal Address of my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Alun Michael). He mentioned in the first instance an idea whose time has come; that was a quote from Victor Hugo—I am glad to see that my right hon. Friend is present. He also mentioned the Cardiff Bay Barrage Bill, and he almost forgot—which I did not—that I served on the Committee that pushed that Bill through, against great opposition. I was amused when the Prime Minister—who was the Leader of the Opposition at the time—asked my right hon. Friend how anyone could oppose it; as my right hon. Friend will remember, there was so much opposition that we had to have two inquiries to bring it about. I flew over it when Middlesbrough won the League Cup—as that competition was then called—at Cardiff. When I saw my work, I knew that it was worth while. One of my greatest achievements in this House was to help to see that the Cardiff Bay Barrage Bill made it on to the statute book.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East (Rosemary McKenna) had a sip of water when she seconded the motion, which reminded me of when Disraeli introduced a Budget. An Opposition Member asked if the liquid she was drinking was water; Disraeli had a glass or a bottle next to him from which he drank steadily throughout his Budget speech, and no one quite knew at the beginning whether it was water or gin, but they certainly knew by the end of his speech. That did not happen in the case of my hon. Friend.
	The Leader of the Opposition mentioned the late Eric Forth. He sat on the Finance and Services Committee with me, and also on the House of Commons Commission with me, and he played an exemplary role on both of them. He was a true parliamentarian, and we all regret the loss of him.
	The Leader of the Opposition mentioned Darfur, and the major struggle in the south of Sudan. I visited Algeria in September; it can play, and is playing, a key role in seeking a solution to the problems in that part of the world. The solution has to come out of Africa, and out of the United Nations. We all wish the various parties well in seeking a solution.
	The right hon. Gentleman also mentioned Afghanistan, and there was a reference to NATO. I am sure that all Members wish NATO to play a major role in Afghanistan, and other nation states to contribute to that. He also mentioned moderate Governments in the Gulf. Often when I visit the Gulf, I see it as a stable area that is surrounded by volatility, which might be coming from Iraq or Iran. How we use the influence of those moderate Gulf states in relation to Palestine and Israel and the problems that arise in respect of Iraq or Iran is very important and significant.
	The right hon. Member for North Antrim is still in his place. The Leader of the Opposition mentioned Sinn Fein, and that support for the police and the courts must be forthcoming. There is an opportunity, which I know that the right hon. Gentleman is taking extraordinarily seriously, to have a final breakthrough on the problems of Ireland that have been with us for centuries, and certainly since 1921-22.
	The Prime Minister talked about energy security, and the fact that we will be importing between 80 and 90 per cent. of our energy in the years to come. Ten per cent. of that energy will come from liquefied natural gas from Qatar, in the Gulf, and another 5 per cent. will come from Algeria. They are very significant strategic partners—one in Africa and the other in the Gulf—and as such we should cultivate those two nation states, not only to ensure our energy supplies but to support the democracy in Algeria and the developing nation state of Qatar.
	Her Majesty mentioned a visit that she will make to the United States of America next year, which will bring about a stronger partnership for this country with the United States. The Gracious Speech also referred to a stable economy's being the foundation of a fair and prosperous society—an issue that the Prime Minister touched on when he responded to the Leader of the Opposition. The Government are not only providing a stable economy as the foundation of a fair and prosperous society; they are maintaining low inflation, sound public finances and high employment. I might add that there is also a link with record investment in public services and with the record numbers of children and pensioners being lifted out of poverty.

Stuart Bell: As someone who lost half his pension requirement through Equitable Life, I have every sympathy with the points made on the Floor of this House about pensions. This issue has been mentioned in the Queen's Speech and there will be debates on it. A local government pension lobby will attend the House next Wednesday, and I look forward to seeing the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) there, in addition to his listening to my reply today.
	The Gracious Speech also referred to the fact that strong, secure and stable communities are at the heart of the Government's programme. Although it made no specific reference to a White Paper on communities, we expect one on city regions to be presented before Christmas. Such regions will add to the concept of stable communities. City regions and regional development agencies are not mutually exclusive, as the Economic Secretary will tell us. The concept of a Tees valley city region has great attractions for Teesside.
	In this respect, I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird), who has taken up her Front-Bench position for this debate. This week, she launched a £750,000 state-of-the-art channel pilot vessel called the Greatham, in the presence of the Minister of State, Department for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman). Teesport has a £300 million deep-sea container terminal plan—a plan that is currently absent from the Government's controversial draft national port strategy. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar mentioned that last year when seconding the motion, so she will remember that. We will continue this project with patience and perseverance, with the help of the Transport Minister and others.
	We also have plans for a Tees valley metro stretching from Darlington to Saltburn, with the potential for a future phase reaching Hartlepool and Nunthorpe, in Middlesbrough. It has the approval of five Tees valley local authorities, and it would cost £140 million and could be operating within 10 years. These are major projects for the public sector, but we have a strong private sector that is seeking to regenerate Teesside, building on our strong petrochemical industry. We are building a biofuel industry on the production of renewable energy products. We have Biofuels at Seal Sands and B1-Fuels in Middlesbrough, with two more plants in the pipeline. We have a wood-burning power station that is due to come online in 2007 and Petroplus Refining, and we shall have Ensus, which is a further plant producing biofuel.
	Although production of biofuel feedstock crops, such as rape seed for biodiesel, offers UK agriculture an excellent market opportunity, domestic production cannot meet the future demand that will be necessary under the European Commission's 5 per cent. renewable transport fuels obligation, especially if the Government move to a higher target of 10 per cent. of biofuels. The Government should consider how the import of feedstock from new sustainable crops from the developing world, such as jatropha, can play a role in meeting our energy needs, benefiting both ourselves and some of the poorest countries on earth.
	Urban regeneration goes hand in hand with industrial regeneration, linking up with the call in the Gracious Speech for stable communities. We need urban regeneration on Teesside to meet the housing demand that flows from industrial regeneration. We need new homes in the hearts of our towns to ease the pressure on North Yorkshire. We need to provide homes for those who will sustain our strong petrochemical industry, which has 12,000 workers, and the new industries of chemical manufacturing, research and development into renewable energy, advanced engineering and logistics. We need a clear plan for home ownership in the north, especially on Teesside.
	Urban regeneration will be the base of the stable communities to which the Gracious Speech referred. To be sure, urban regeneration will take time—some 10 years, with appropriate levels of investment. That investment may be Government led, but the private sector will leverage in funds to the tune of some £450 million. For that to happen, our single housing investment pot should rise to £30 million a year, to give us the 10-year building space. So far, £32 million has been made available over two years. That is obviously £16 million a year, but there is doubt in Government circles over the second year commitment. We are seeking to achieve a golden dawn of industrial regeneration and urban regeneration on Teesside.
	A great deal will be made of the Prime Minister's last address on the Gracious Speech, which will be compared with his first. One thing that I remember is that in 1997 the first act of the then Secretary of State for Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson), was to authorise the private finance building of the James Cook university hospital, which is now one of the finest hospitals in the country. I met a constituent at the Middlesbrough cenotaph on Sunday who had returned to the constituency because her ailing husband needed the best treatment that he could receive, which she knew would be at the James Cook university hospital. Many have written to me to say that the hospital is patient centred, family centred and community centred.
	Of all the legacies that our Prime Minister will leave us from his tenure in office, he can be proud of what he has done for our patients, those who attend the health service and those who have benefited from it. That will be one of his finest legacies.

Keith Vaz: It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard). I think that this is the first Queen's Speech since he announced his decision to stand down at the next election, and I want to pay tribute to him. Despite having held the highest possible offices in this country, he remains an assiduous constituency Member of Parliament, and since giving up the leadership of the Conservative party he has contributed fully as a Back Bencher to debates in the House, unlike some others who have held high office. I am sure that he will be missed. However, although the Leader of the Opposition has demanded a general election immediately—as is the wont of most Leaders of the Opposition—I am sure that before the right hon. and learned Gentleman leaves this place he will participate in other Queen's Speech debates in the years to come.
	I shall not talk about Iraq, even though that has been the flavour of a number of the speeches so far. I want to congratulate both the proposer and the seconder of the Queen's Speech debate. I entered the House at the same time as my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Alun Michael). He sat on my first Committee in 1987; it was on an immigration Bill—there will be another one this year.
	I do not know who is responsible for the Cardiff bay success, but I think we should award joint credit to the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe and my right hon. Friend, because I think that none of us would want to see it go—it being so successful and making such a great contribution to the economy of Wales.
	It is also right that the Government, in the Gracious Speech, have put home affairs issues and security issues at the centre of their legislative programme. On security issues I am a great loyalist. I accept virtually everything that I am told by Home Secretaries, especially of my party. I also accept it when I am told that very senior figures in the security services tell us that there are real problems and that there are conspiracies. I think that the Home Secretary, on Radio 4 this morning, said that there were 30 separate plots or conspiracies, at various stages, in existence. I accept it when he says that because I—and, I think, most Members, unless they are privy to the special information that is given—do not know any different. Therefore, the need for tough measures to deal with those who wish to undermine our country and cause death and destruction to our people is a serious issue, and I accept that the Government have a responsibility to legislate. However, there is also a responsibility to ensure that proper evidence is put before the House when the case is being made, and I hope that in the rush for legislation—I take the point that it is urgent and important—we pause and consider people's responsibilities and their civil liberties. I hope that that will be the case in the measures that will be brought forward by the Government in this Queen's Speech.
	The second point that I want to make is about the proposals to reform the Home Office. We have a former Home Secretary in the House this afternoon. He will recall that when he was Home Secretary I challenged him on many occasions from the Back Benches about the never-ending problems that exist in the Home Office. I do not think that we should criticise the present Home Secretary for saying that the Home Office is not fit for purpose; it was tremendously refreshing. Some of us who have had to deal with immigration cases over the past 20 years fundamentally believe that to be the case, not just because of our very wide case load in that area, but because there seems to be no change in the way in which the Home Office has been administered.
	I know that the Government say of the former Home Secretary that he signed a contract that brought in a new computer system that did not work, and that is a fact. It is also a fact that the backlog of cases at the immigration and nationality directorate has decreased enormously in the past 10 years. However, it still remains a fact that the backlog is 220,000 cases, and that is far too big a backlog for my constituents. Week after week they come to my surgery, as they do to the surgeries of other. Members, and complain about the time that it takes to get an answer from the Home Office.
	The Home Office issues target letters. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Purchase) has seen the most recent letter, saying that within three weeks 70 per cent. of postal applications will be dealt with. I know that that does not happen. I am sure that the leading members of the IND know that that does not happen, but they still issue those letters. My fear is that in one of these Bills the operation of IND will be handed over to an outside agency. If it makes it more efficient, I have no problem, but I think it odd that we should have to hand the administration of IND to an outside agency. What does that say about the ability of our officials—and our Ministers—to run this system?

Keith Vaz: I agree with the hon. Gentleman; he is absolutely right. Obviously, there is a place for legislation, which is why we are here. Otherwise, we would just be conducting debates and chats without conclusion. We have to legislate, otherwise what is the point of Parliament? However, legislating to the extent that we end up with 57 pieces of Home Office legislation without the system getting any better can lead to real problems and the hon. Gentleman is quite right to pinpoint that.
	I say that if we are to have an outside agency, it has to be coupled with making the system more efficient. It should not mean just seconding everyone who currently works for IND to work for the new agency. It also means that there has to be responsibility on the part of Ministers. If hon. Members have constituency cases, they need to be able to see Ministers in order to get the problems resolved. That has certainly been the case for the past 20 years, and I would be loth to support any legislation if it meant that I could not go to the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality with a fundamental case and say, "Your officials have got this wrong. You have the discretion and I want to ensure that you consider this matter on the merits of the case rather than on the file sent up by your officials." If we legislate again, as we are, on Home Office issues, we need to ensure that the system gets better. That means taking administrative action and not doing what Ministers have done over the past few weeks—give large bonuses to IND officials because they hit their targets. If the targets are hit and the system is still bad, those officials should not, in my view, get those bonuses. I look forward to the Bill, but hope that the House will ensure that it is scrutinised carefully.
	I welcome the legal services Bill and I see in her place the Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird). No doubt she will have a role in that Bill and, indeed, the new Bill proposed for tribunals. We took note of the Lord Chancellor's statement that he thought that the criminal justice system was in chaos—a very odd thing for the Lord Chancellor to say. I know that the Lord Chancellor—I served as his Parliamentary Private Secretary for a year—is very up front and honest. If he thinks that something is going wrong with the system, he says so clearly. I hope that the Bill will bring about a more efficient system and that we do not simply change senior officials from the Department for Constitutional Affairs to the Court Service. We need a more efficient system, especially at a time when the Government have, because of the Carter reviews, effectively capped legal aid. We need a system that ensures that legal aid is properly targeted.
	On the proposed courts and tribunals Bill, I hope that it will make our tribunals system easier to understand for our citizens, who do not get legal aid for going to first instance tribunals. They have to do a lot of the work themselves or rely on solicitors that happen to be members of trade unions. It is vital that citizens be given proper assistance and support with respect to how our system operates.

Keith Vaz: I do think that that is an important issue, but there is the catch-all phrase at the end of the Queen's Speech—to the effect that "other measures" may be laid before Parliament—so perhaps that is way of fulfilling the ambitions of the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) to secure a Bill on that particular subject.
	While on the subject of other measures, I would have liked two further measures to have been included. The first is the coroners Bill—it existed in draft form—that we were promised by the Department for Constitutional Affairs. A great deal of work has been done by its Minister of State, but we are not to have a coroners Bill. I know that consumers of the coroner service would want such a Bill as soon as possible. Secondly, I have pressed for new legislation to deal with violent video games, how they are reviewed and how they are labelled. I had hoped that the Government would use the opportunity of the Queen's Speech to introduce such a Bill.
	If I am lucky enough to win a place in the ballot for private Member's Bills, I want to introduce a Bill that would improve the workings of the Insolvency Service. I have campaigned for 15 years for the victims of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International and sat through some of the litigation that was initiated by the liquidators against the Bank of England at huge costs to the victims of BCCI, so I think that it is important that we look at the way in which the Insolvency Service operates. Legislation along those lines would be welcome.
	I wish to make two final points. I am glad that we are not having a health service Bill. As with immigration Bills, we have had enough health service Bills. We cannot modernise and reshape the health service any further through legislation, but instead should consolidate the gains that we have made. A huge amount of resources have gone into the health service—although, in Leicester, we will be slightly short-changed in the money that we were promised for our three new hospitals. Instead of £900 million, we will get £700 million. It obviously helps that the Secretary of State for Health is one of the Leicester Members, but she still took £200 million away from us.
	However, my right hon. Friend is giving us a new diabetes centre of excellence, which I welcome greatly as someone who, like some other Members, suffers from type 2 diabetes. Diabetes screening is extremely important and I discovered that I had type 2 diabetes only after I opened a diabetes screening centre two years ago. I was screened and then rung up the next day to be told that I had diabetes. Members should be careful in what they open, just in case something comes up.
	My very last point concerns foreign affairs—not Iraq, but Europe. I am very disappointed that no more mention was made of Europe other than the usual comments about working with our European partners. There is no legislation on enlargement on the horizon this Session, but Romania and Bulgaria will join the European Union on 1 January next year.

Stuart Bell: My right hon. Friend intervened on me last year when I spoke on Europe in last year's debate on the Queen's Speech, so will he confirm that next year is the 50th anniversary of the signing of the treaty of Rome? Would that not provide an opportunity for us all to debate again the future of Europe, its constitutional arrangements and how we should move the agenda forward?

Ian Paisley: I identify myself and my colleagues on this Bench with the sympathy that has been expressed in relation to those who have died serving their Queen, their country and the people of our nation. That sympathy comes from all parts of the House. Northern Ireland is, of course, the smallest part of the United Kingdom, but the people have the same sympathy and they too have passed through their own trials and troubles.
	I have every sympathy with the families of former Members of the House who cannot be with us because they have been called into the great eternity that lies before us all. As a Christian minister, I know that, at certain times of the year—at times like these—it comes back forcibly just how touched by that they are. We all feel for them and our pious prayers are with them.
	I am going to speak for only a few minutes. I am sure that people will be glad of that. I could not let this occasion go by because very serious legislation will come before the House in a few days' time. The restoration of devolution in Northern Ireland will be dealt with, including bringing forward legislation. I cannot prophesy—and I would not attempt to do so—what that legislation will be. Even if I did know something, I would not, as a Privy Councillor, be permitted to say anything about it. However, I have sat in the House for a long time. The House failed miserably to deal with terrorism in Northern Ireland. I am not going to go into the background of that. It is a fact.
	I have in my study in the Stormont Parliament photographs of 301 gallant policemen who gave their lives in that struggle. If we put that into United Kingdom terms—by percentages—that would be something like 6,000 policemen. The figures stagger us. Of all the Members from Northern Ireland, I have been at more funerals than any other public representative. That is for the simple reason that I not only represent Northern Ireland from North Antrim, but, for 25 years, I was a Member of the European Parliament, representing all of Northern Ireland as one constituency. So, I know something of the deep sorrows.
	The legislation coming forth, however, must deal with the issue that no one can be in government in Northern Ireland, or any part of the United Kingdom, unless they uphold the police and the rule of law, and support and give help and assistance to the people who are the official agents of Government in dealing with crime and seeing that the law is faithfully carried out. This is a day of decision for Northern Ireland. If Northern Ireland is going to take another road to peace and prosperity, it must have the rock-solid foundation that anyone serving in government must be a loyal subject of the security forces, the forces of the Crown, the police and those who adjudicate justice in the court system.
	What alarms me is this. The joint leaders of Sinn Fein recently had meetings in the United States of America; they included Mr. Adams, who is the Member of Parliament for Belfast, West, although he does not attend. He had only been let back in to America after a long delay. At one of those meetings he said, "Ian Paisley says that I am not for law and I am not for order. He is therefore demanding that we all must take a pledge to support the police and the adjudication of the courts of the land." He said, "I want to make a statement here tonight." This was his statement. He said, "I want to tell this audience and America that I am for law and I am for order, but I am opposed—totally—to the law of Britain and I am opposed totally to the Orange Order." Here is a man who tells us that he will support the police—although the pledge is yet to be seen and heard or subscribed to—but who then goes out of the country and says that he does not support British rule, British order or the British way of life. I and the majority of people, both nationalists and Protestants, look upon that as almost a redeclaration of war against us.
	I simply say this to the House: I trust that everyone here will be at the debates and that the House will say, on the first occasion that it has had such an opportunity, "Right, if you obey the law, if you support the Crown forces, if you support the police, you can be in government—provided, of course, that you are voted into government." That should be the message from this House. If we do that, I believe that we will deliver ourselves from the darkness of the past and come to a light that will be a light indeed to the people and the children of Northern Ireland.

Ken Purchase: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that reminder. Newspapers and radio stations have been running phone-ins and write-ins asking people what piece of legislation they would like.

Kevan Jones: I know that Wolverhampton is a unique and special place. The experience from my constituency this year is that both the lead-up to fireworks' night and the period after it have been quieter than in previous years.

Ken Purchase: I am pleased for my hon. Friend and his constituents, and I wish I could say the same for mine. Newspapers have run such competitions. Nowhere in the Queen's Speech, however, do I see a reference to fireworks. Rest assured that such a measure would be extremely welcome in my constituency.
	I add my voice to the voices of those who have paid tribute to all the hon. Members who have died since the last Queen's Speech. If I may, I should like to make a special reference to my dear friend Robin Cook. I had the privilege of being his friend for 20 years and of working for him in this place both in opposition and in government. Robin was an extraordinary character who held this House in the palm of his hand, no more so than at the time of the Scott report, to which reference has been made. I promise not to mention Iraq again, except in this context.
	Hon. Members will recall that particular performance. I recall sitting on the Opposition Benches when Robin Cook was at the Dispatch Box as though it were yesterday. It was an amazing performance. Hon. Members will also recall that he was supposedly given very little time to read the Scott report, yet was able to quote it almost chapter and verse. I found that interesting because, as part of Robin's team, I knew that members of his staff attended virtually every session of the Scott report and that copious notes were taken, points made and understandings gained.
	The weekend following that amazing speech, the  New Statesman printed a cartoon showing a door portal and Margaret Cook saying, "Robin, your dinner will be ready in five minutes". His reply was, "Thank you, dear. Just time to read 'War and Peace'."

Ken Purchase: Might I remind the hon. Gentleman that he would not even let Robin have a pencil? None the less, that was an extraordinary parliamentary performance, and I am privileged to be able to stand here and mention it today, following his regrettable death. My thoughts and sympathies are also with the families of other Members who have departed during that period.
	There is, however, much in the Queen's Speech that I can welcome, certainly the reshuffle on child support. What a dreadful experience that has been for us all. More can be done on offender management and, of course, let us do what we can in the circumstances on concessionary bus travel. How many times must we revisit the issue of border and immigration controls? I suspect that we will still be talking about it in 20 years. It seems that in a world with 10 million refugees, the west will for ever be subject to people wishing to join in our prosperity. I make no political point there, but the prosperity of the north and the west in particular attracts people who are striving to do better for themselves and for their families.
	Some of my constituents complain that Wolverhampton has been subject to wave after wave of immigration—including the Windrush people, but starting before that. I am proud to say that Wolverhampton was home to many Poles and Ukrainians who came here immediately at the end of the war, and as a schoolboy I was able to make friends with many of them. Wave after wave have come to Wolverhampton, and by and large we have managed to rub along together to create a community and a city that is well worth living in.
	People from our small island, over the centuries, have peopled almost every corner of the world. I like to believe that, by and large, that has been to the advantage of the world and of Britain. Long may it be the case that young people move freely around the world to find what they believe are the best opportunities for them.
	While I understand that Home Office Ministers are under pressure and unable to deal with the number of people coming to Britain, I say that when the day comes that we allow bigots, small-minded people and others of that ilk to determine our immigration policy, that will be a sad day not just for Britain, but for Europe and the world. None the less, we have to give the issue a fair wind to achieve some satisfaction for people who understand the dangers inherent there as well.
	I want to refer to the local government Bill. We have already had the White Paper, which was pretty unsatisfactory. For a couple of minutes, I want to describe to Members what I believe has been the social policy failure not just of this Government, but of a succession of Governments. We love to talk about cursively divining social policy—joined-up working—but I want to give the House an illustration of how that has not worked.
	That failure is not based on the fact that Mrs. Thatcher decided to sell council homes. I own my own home, as do most people in the Chamber, and I have no objection to anyone else owning their own home and no problem with the sale of council houses—I want to make that clear—at a proper discount for sitting tenants. The detail is not that important, but what is important is the fact that successive Governments seem unable to understand the value of allowing local authorities, or councils, to build more homes.
	Always in the post-war era, local government has built homes of a good standard and they have made the major contribution to public health in this country—more so than the national health service itself, in so far as they have created sanitary conditions in which people can raise their families while working and paying an affordable rent that allows them to work and keep the children. It seems, if I may say so, that the Government have a mental block in that they fail to see the massive success of council house building the length and breadth of this country in any way other than saying, "Oh well, it's to do with the council. We must change that."
	Let me give an illustration. My constituency, like many others, has council estates where people have bought former council homes, saved a bob or two and then moved out into the private sector proper, having left their council house in the hands of an agent who rents it out for them. The rent officer then offers a market rent, which is almost invariably at least twice as much as that which the council can charge, due to its 20,000 to 30,000 houses, pooling of historic costs, subsidies and other elements of housing finance. Ordinary people doing ordinary jobs on average pay simply cannot afford to pay that rent without assistance. In my constituency and, I suspect, others, it is usually a single mother with two or three children—sometimes fewer and sometimes more—on 100 per cent. rent rebate who can afford to live there. Not always, but often, the children in that home have more problems than they should be expected to cope with at such a tender age. They go to the local school, are sometimes not well nourished, sometimes tired, sometimes not well looked after, and, guess what, standards at that school start to waver and then to tumble. What do we politicians say? We say that the teachers are responsible, but they are not. The failure is one of social policy, in so far as it is intellectually incoherent—it does not join up, to use the vernacular phrase.

David Clelland: On looking at the Queen's Speech, the first thought that goes through my mind is, "Is all this legislation necessary, and how will these Bills help my constituents?" Notwithstanding what my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Purchase) had to say, I doubt whether we really need yet another local government Bill. Hardly a year goes by without further changes being foisted on local councils, which then find that they are spending more and more time dealing with change, rather than concentrating on delivering front-line services.
	The local government Bill in the Queen's Speech was preceded by a White Paper that suggests more devolution to the localities, although—to echo the point just made by the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (David Maclean)—not necessarily to local government; however, it still prescribes the changes in local government structure and management that can be made. Despite the lack of demand and the experience so far, it appears that there is to be yet another attempt to manoeuvre local authorities in the direction of elected mayors.
	How can we accept that more power is to be devolved from the centre, when the centre is being so prescriptive in the direction that change should take? Surely the essence of local government is that councillors should be able to develop systems that suit their area. That may result in different systems in different localities, but so what? Local government should develop by learning from the experiences of others and, where appropriate, by adapting what it learns to its own areas and circumstances. I hope that the local government Bill outlined in the Queen's Speech will recognise the valuable contribution our locally elected representatives make to our society and the value of diversity and choice, and show a little more flexibility than has hitherto been shown.
	There is also to be yet another attempt to complete the modernisation and reform of the House of Lords. In answering a question from me on this issue in 2003, the Prime Minister said, among other things, the following:
	"I personally think that a hybrid between the two"—
	an elected and an appointed House—
	"is wrong and will not work."—[ Official Report, 29 January 2003; Vol. 398, c. 877.]
	Yet the Leader of the House is suggesting that just such a proposal will be brought to the House early in the new Session. Of course, the Labour party manifesto promised the completion of reform and to produce a more representative second Chamber, but that can be achieved without the introduction of elected Members, as I hope Parliament will see.
	However, if the reforms as outlined so far by the Leader of the House are pursued, I hope that the people will be given the chance to vote on them in a referendum. After all, if referendums were right for Scotland, Wales and the devolved regional assemblies, such a major constitutional change, as outlined by the Leader of the House, should also be decided by the people. The question then would be, "Will people vote for another 500 or so paid politicians, with their expenses, secretaries, researchers and so on?" That was the simplistic argument that, among other things, defeated the attempt to introduce regional government to the north-east. In my view, that defeat was bad for news for the north-east, but it will have been very good news if it prevents the disaster of an elected second Chamber.
	We have recently had some good news in the north-east. According to the UK competitiveness index, the north-east's competitiveness rose by 3.1 per cent. during 2005-06, which should be compared with a fall of 4.1 per cent. in the south-east. According to report's authors, that is
	"a sign that the government's policies on regional development and devolution are beginning to impact".
	However, the north-east is still at the bottom of the table, so a lot remains to be done. In particular, we need further to encourage the growth of businesses and jobs in the region. To a large degree, that will depend on good transport links throughout the region and on our links with other regions. We have been running a "go for jobs" campaign, which has the support of all the partners in the north-east. The impetus for that campaign was the Highways Agency's hampering of progress by restricting development, on the ground of increased congestion—the infamous "article 14 orders".
	There is no doubt that congestion is a problem, and it is particularly acute on the A1-Gateshead western bypass, where the road often resembles a car park, rather than a motorway. Of major concern in our region is the fact that, while the Highways Agency argues that it has a responsibility to relieve and to avoid congested roads, it has done precious little to improve our roads over too many years. Indeed, I first raised this issue with the then Conservative transport Minister, the late John Watts, back in the 1980s, and have been banging on about it ever since.
	The Queen's Speech refers to a Bill to tackle road congestion and to improve public transport, and the north-east looks to that Bill to address seriously, at last, the very serious problems that we face. While it is true to say that we cannot build our way out of congestion, it needs to be recognised that road transport will nevertheless be a major feature of our country's social and economic activity for the foreseeable future.
	The nation's motorway network should constitute a proper and fully integrated system of free-flowing arteries for social activity and economic development. At the moment, the north-east remains cut off, with no continuous motorway links north, south or west to the rest of the system. Indeed, there is not a single mile of three-lane motorway anywhere in the region. It is grossly unfair and discriminatory that we should be so deprived, and this problem must be resolved if our region is to make more rapid progress economically and socially.
	One way further to reduce the north-south divide is to reduce journey times between the regions, and in this regard high-speed rail is vital.

David Clelland: My hon. Friend makes his point well.
	I cannot believe that by the end of the 21st century high-speed inter-city links will still consist of hundreds of tonnes of metal trundling along on steel rails. As an electrical engineering apprentice in the 1960s, I learned about the linear motor. It is a concept that was invented in Britain and, in simple terms, involves cutting open an electric motor and laying it flat, so that instead of a rotor going round and round, a flat panel moves along horizontally, supported and propelled by magnetism. Maglev was born.
	The introduction of maglev in the UK is way past its time. It could have formed an ultra-modern rapid transport system for the UK, had any Government been brave and futuristic enough to bite the bullet. Such a system of high-speed travel, with trains travelling at speeds of up to 300 mph, would be a major contribution to reducing regional disparities, bringing prosperity to the north and cooling the overheated and congested south. A Government for the 21st century will surely take up the challenge. I want that to be a Labour Government.
	In the meantime, we are led to believe that the way forward is to discourage motorists from using their cars so much. Local authorities are to be given the power and incentive to introduce road pricing as a way of relieving congestion and tackling global warming. However, people still have to get around their local areas. Without a viable, attractive and affordable public transport alternative, road pricing will merely end up as another unpopular tax. Encouraging indications are coming from Ministers. They are finally accepting that local transport has been decimated by the privatisation of bus services and that without some form of local control over buses, the system of local transport that is needed to attract motorists out of their cars will not exist.
	We are given to understand that Ministers may take powers in the proposed Bill to run a number of pilot schemes to test alternative systems. I should like to volunteer Tyne and Wear for a franchising system that would put the power to decide the routes on which buses will run in the hands of local transport authorities. Our case is built on two facts. First, we have the metro, which needs a properly integrated system to operate to its full efficiency and provide the comprehensive services that people in the area need and deserve. Secondly, our major industrial and commercial areas are badly in need of the kind of congestion relief with which a good public transport service can help.
	I notice a line in the Queen's Speech that says:
	"Legislation will provide for free off-peak local bus travel for pensioners and disabled people."
	That is of course the national rolling out of the local scheme, which currently restricts travel to local authority boundaries. I welcome that, but the scheme that the Government introduced last year has cost Tyne and Wear dear, with £7 million of cuts, and is in danger of costing us £2 million to £3 million in cuts this year. My question to the Government, which I shall ask when the Bill comes before the House and throughout its passage, is: can we have our money back?
	Another area in urgent need of review is reform of the welfare system, to which the Queen's Speech also referred. I should like to pay tribute to the huge contribution made to our society by those who care for people who are less fortunate than others. Our Government have a good record on that, the best example of which is perhaps the introduction of the minimum wage. However, a huge anomaly has arisen as a result of the latest—and welcome—increase in the minimum hourly rate. Many of our fellow citizens, whose incomes are suppressed because they care for a disabled, elderly or terminally ill relative, are in receipt of carer's allowance. However, that allowance is paid only if income is less than £84 a week. Because the increase in the minimum wage has taken some carers marginally over £84—sometimes by as little as a few pence—they have lost the whole of the £46 a week allowance.
	The Department for Work and Pensions is looking into the issue, and I am hopeful of a successful outcome, but it highlights the kind of anomaly that can arise when a well-meaning policy does not keep pace with the rest of the system. Without the millions of carers up and down the country who look after sick, disabled and elderly people, the NHS and social services would have to step in, and what would the cost be then? Something must be done in this new Session to correct the system. Carer's allowance should be reduced gradually, in direct proportion to the amount by which the earnings limit is breached, and the limit itself should be increased to take into account wage inflation and increases in the minimum wage.
	I welcome the proposal to introduce a climate change Bill. The issue must take priority over all others, as it threatens our very survival, but we cannot resolve it alone, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said. Climate change recognises no national boundaries. Crucially, there is little sign that countries such as India and China, with their fast growing economies, are keen to co-operate. It is difficult to argue the case with those countries when the United States, which is responsible for between one quarter and one fifth of global emissions, is still reluctant fully to join the fight, although I hope that we might see some progress there, with the political changes of recent weeks.
	Whatever we might think about our Government's performance and no matter how good we are at doing our bit in the UK, without international agreements and serious action by developed and emerging economies alike, the problem cannot be resolved. In the meantime, major steps in tackling climate change here must be energy efficiency and energy conservation, waste management and waste avoidance, in Government, industry and the home.
	In that regard, we need more initiatives like the Newcastle and Gateshead warm zones, which help to insulate homes and introduce energy conservation, while keeping people warm. There should be less packaging and more biodegradable products. I hope that the climate change Bill will not only move us further towards playing our full part in the struggle for the future of our planet, but do so in a way that takes all our people with us, on the basis of a proper understanding of the problem and why each and every one of us has our part to play. I should like to commend Gateshead council in that regard, on winning a prize at the UK Fleet Heroes awards, after reducing carbon emissions by 300 tonnes last year.
	Science must play a major part in finding less polluting alternatives and more efficient energy sources. It is no good telling people that they can no longer travel and expecting that to be an acceptable long-term solution. New, cleaner and more efficient sources of energy must form a large part of the answer. Much more research and development is needed to find and develop them.
	Other welcome proposals in the Queen's Speech include those to put victims at the heart of the criminal justice system. I hope that when we do so we shall give proper recognition to the contributions made by the voluntary victim support units up and down the country.
	Finally, I welcome the Government's determination to find a lasting solution to the Israel-Palestine problem and to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. There can be no doubt that a lasting settlement that brings peace between the peoples of Israel and Palestine will be a major step forward in bringing about peace across the middle east and, I hope, the wider world.

David Evennett: I am pleased to participate in this debate on the Queen's Speech, the contents of which were rather mixed and represent a missed opportunity, given what it did and did not contain. For some of us, the Queen's Speech was therefore a disappointment—no new ideas, merely a recycling of previous measures and approaches. To me and others in my party, those measures looked like those of a tired Government who have run out of steam. The speech seemed to contain more illusion than reality. After nine years of activity and legislation, there are still so many problems that the Government have either not dealt with or dealt with so badly that they have made them worse.
	I am delighted to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (David Maclean), who spoke about post office closures. Closures in suburban constituencies like mine are just as important as they are in rural areas, because post offices are centres of the community. Pensioners, families, mothers with young children and businesses need the facilities that post offices supply in their localities, but nothing in today's measures highlights the problems of the communities in the suburbs, where post offices are also being closed. We also heard nothing about cuts in NHS provision in community services and hospitals in Bexley. That will be a sore omission for my constituents and for people in neighbouring constituencies in the borough.
	Antisocial behaviour is a serious problem in our area, but the Government have not been able to deal with it. There is the usual comment in the speech about Government dealing with antisocial behaviour, but they have had endless attempts and the problem seems to be becoming worse. In addition, skills shortages, concerns about standards in education, the stealth taxes that the Government have imposed on my constituents, and many transport issues are not addressed in the Queen's Speech.
	I welcome some measures in the speech, however, particularly the proposal to restore the link between pensions and earnings. In the last general election, many of us campaigned on introducing such a measure— [Interruption.] The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) has been up and down, intervening on quite a few Members this afternoon, and yes, there was a mistake, but one that we looked to rectify in the general election. The Government have only just taken that on board. We have to accept that policy mistakes were made in the past, but the important thing is to recognise when mistakes have been made, and to act accordingly. It has taken the Government a long time to see their mistake in not dealing with the matter earlier.
	There are three subjects on which I want to concentrate: the environment, London and education. The environment is a tremendously important issue for all of us, and that fact was highlighted in other speeches this afternoon, including in the excellent speech made by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. We welcome the climate change Bill, as we need to address the issue for the future of our country and the world, for the sake of our children and grandchildren. However, the problem in my part of the world is that although the Government say that they want to be green and improve the environment, they are taking measures that have the opposite effect.
	Recently, Government approval was given for a waste-to-energy incinerator in Belvedere, which is not in my constituency, although it is in the borough of Bexley. Many of us have campaigned against it for the past 15 years, because we were concerned about pollution and the increase in transport that would result from waste being taken to the site. We were also concerned about the environment of the riverside, which we tried to clean up; we wanted improving, non-polluting industries there, yet the Government decided to approve the incinerator. That is not exactly environmentally friendly action on the part of a Government who profess concern for the environment.
	Another issue is the proposed Thames Gateway bridge, which many of us are campaigning against vigorously. There was a public inquiry on the proposal, and I believe that the public inquiry inspector's report is now with the Secretary of State for Transport, or will be shortly. The Government seemed agnostic on the subject, but I hope that they will oppose the plan when they have studied the inspector's report. Locally, all political parties and community groups are against having a crossing point at that part of the Thames. That is not only because of the environmental consequences of pollution—our part of south-east London already has poor air quality, because of history, location and air direction—but, more importantly, because it would increase the traffic in suburban areas in Bexley.
	I hope that the Government will take on board the issues raised in the public inquiry, and by community groups and campaigners. If they approve the proposal, their professions of interest in green issues and the environment will be proved to be shallow. I hope that the Government will stick firmly to what they say about being green when it comes to policies in our area. I should like to mention overdevelopment, too. We in the south-east are concerned about the increase in building, which is taking place on every open space, and about losing greenfield and brownfield sites that we very much value. I hope that the Government will look again at those issues.
	On London, the Queen's Speech says that
	"Bills will provide for reform of local government and enhanced powers for the Mayor and Assembly for London."
	Many of us are extremely concerned about that. We believe in localism, and we believe that local communities should make decisions that affect the locality. We do not want a Mayor—regardless of political persuasion—with increasing powers, who sits in the centre of London, making decisions on a wide range of issues that affect the suburbs. The current Mayor has visited my borough only once since he came to office, yet the Government want to give him more powers to make more decisions about events in, and policies for, Bexley.
	Bexley is fortunate to have a new Conservative council, elected last May. It is led by Councillor Ian Clement who, together with his team, is doing a tremendous job after four years of a profligate and inefficient Labour council. To take power away from that team and give it to the centre—to the London Mayor—would be a terrible mistake, and the idea is not popular in my area.
	While we are talking about unpopular measures that communities in London face, the Olympic levy is of great concern. Although we were all supportive of holding the Olympics in London, we believe that the Olympics are a national, and not just a London, event. Why should Londoners pay an additional levy, not knowing how long it will apply, and how much it will be, for the pleasure of having the Olympics in London?

David Evennett: My hon. Friend makes a good point, and it adds insult to injury that those in London must deal with that issue, on top of paying a levy for the privilege of holding the Olympics. In my area, pensioners are particularly exercised about the subject, and I share their view that London should not be penalised with an Olympic levy.
	I should like to highlight the importance of regeneration in London, but the majority of the regeneration that will result from the Olympics will take place north of the Thames. Worth while as that may be, it means that the people of Bexley will pay for the Olympics and get precious little for their money, because neither events nor regeneration will take place in Bexley. There is real concern about that, but the Government do not seem terribly fussed or concerned about the issue, either in the Queen's Speech or elsewhere, although they ought to be.
	My third point is on education. We all remember the Prime Minister saying that education would be all-important to his Government when he came into power in 1997, yet there are still tremendous problems to do with education and its provision, as well as skills shortages. Bexley has very good education provision, because we have diversity. There are church schools, grammar schools, technical schools and some excellent comprehensive schools. However, across the country, and even in Bexley, there is still a shortage of skilled labour. The number of pupils leaving school with few qualifications and poor basic skills is quite alarming given that the Government, over the years, have said that education was their top priority.
	Behaviour, discipline and truancy are all issues that still need to be addressed, and the suggestion made in the Queen's Speech that the Government
	"will continue to raise standards"
	has rather a hollow ring to those of us who were teachers, and to parents, people working with businesses, and school governors, such as me. We are concerned about what is happening.
	Employers who speak to me feel that in general qualifications are easier to obtain than they were in the past and that there are far too many top grades at GCSE and A-level. That is a concern. Although we welcome the contributions of our tremendous teachers and schools, something is going wrong and the Queen's Speech does not address the underlying problems in our education system.
	Of course, we need more emphasis on training, skills and job-related opportunities. It is a tremendous problem for our society that we do not have enough plumbers, carpenters and skilled tradespeople. I look with interest to the further education Bill highlighted in the Queen's Speech to show us how exactly the Government plan to overcome the skills shortage.
	My constituents will be extremely disappointed with most of the Queen's Speech. More power for the London Mayor, the failure to address the Olympic levy and the costs of the Olympics to London council tax payers, the failure to come to grips with health service cuts and the problems of antisocial behaviour are real issues confronted daily by my constituents and in London. The generalities of the Queen's Speech will not do. My constituents think that after nine years the Government should have done better. We all feel that the speech goes only a limited way towards improving the quality of life of our constituents, so we are rather sceptical that it will actually achieve what we think needs to be done.
	The Queen's Speech contains a few good points but a lot is not being said or dealt with, so the Opposition are extremely concerned about how the real problems will be addressed. Many of us feel that it will certainly not be under this Government or their successor; it will be only when we have had a general election that we will actually get down to dealing with the problems that concern the vast majority of our constituents. The Government keep talking about the problems but they do not succeed in solving them.

Adrian Bailey: I join others in paying tribute to the former Members of the House who are no longer with us. I join, too, in the compliments made to the proposer and seconder of the Queen's Speech, but I shall not try to join in the debate on the conception and gestation of the Cardiff bay development project.
	I welcome the Queen's Speech and the Bills outlined in it, which address the big issues that confront us: security, climate change and pensions. It is a Queen's Speech for a Government who are looking to the future, prepared to spell out hard facts, face up to difficulties and introduce legislation to address them.
	I shall concentrate my remarks on the proposed climate change Bill, but first I want to say one or two things about security and the war on terror as it has exercised a number of Members. Any country at war has a dilemma in striking the appropriate balance between security at home and the civil liberties that it is fighting to protect. That dilemma is far more difficult now than in any previous wartime situation. Most previous wars have been against a defined enemy operating from a defined geographical base, but now we are fighting a completely different war, against opponents who may, in day-to-day activity, be indistinguishable from friends and working colleagues. None the less, the vision of the society that they are trying to bring about is medieval and theocratic and denies people basic human rights and equality of opportunity.
	Striking a legislative balance that enables us to identify and put away such people while protecting the civil liberties that enable them to thrive is extremely difficult. At present, the judicial system and, possibly, a media lobby seem to concentrate on protecting the civil liberties of a group of people who are hellbent on destroying ours. They do not have the balance right, but the Government's proposals on identity cards and, perhaps, on the extension of the 28-day detention period are appropriate as part of the balance of provisions that are necessary in our judicial system to address the scale of the security problem that we face.
	In common with many other MPs, I spent 20 days with the West Midlands police during the summer as part of the police and parliamentary scheme. I regularly asked whether identity cards would help the police in their everyday professional duties. Across the board, in all departments, the answer was yes. Opposition Members cannot disregard and reject such consistent advice from a body of people who are engaged day to day in dealing with the problems. I also spent some time with the high-tech group, looking at internet security issues and at how the police trace internet and paedophile crime.
	We have a real problem in respect of security, because although the people we are trying to counter have the most simplistic vision of society, they use the most high-tech, skilled methods to perpetrate their message and to operate within the community. From my conversations with the police and civilian staff who daily try to decipher internet codes and encryptions to locate the criminals who use the internet and mobile phone technology to promote their activities, it became obvious that 28 days is insufficient for the police to carry out inquiries on the scale necessary to deal with such criminal activity, whether terrorist or not.
	We can argue about other crimes, but nobody would deny that the modern terrorist operating with highly sophisticated means has a potential for destruction that we have never faced in the past from more conventional enemies. We need to look at a different legislative framework, in particular the extension of the 28-day period, so that our police have the tools available to undertake the highly complex investigations necessary to identify those people and bring them to judgment. That is part and parcel of an appropriate and correct balance in our judicial system between freedom and security.

Adrian Bailey: I shall at least touch on that, but essentially I agree with the hon. Gentleman. If taxation is related to the environment, it must be designed to deal with environmental problems. I do not think that there is much difference between us on that.
	If the Government make the wrong decisions, foundries in my constituency will have higher costs and jobs could be lost to companies abroad that have higher carbon emissions, but which are at a competitive advantage because their overall costs are lower. The Bill will create a new domestic legal framework for emission reductions and provide a long-term certainty and incentive for business to invest in low-carbon technology. We are assured of that. It will also help with the development of international policy. If that is so, and I think that it will be, it provides the opportunity to preserve our steel and foundry industries, to promote lower-carbon technology within them, and to export that technology abroad.
	Traditionally, steel production and cast metal production have been regarded as dirty industries because the processes they use are carbon intensive. Ironically, the products—steel and cast metal—are relatively environmentally friendly because they are durable, which means that they last a long time and do not need to be replaced. Above all, however, they are recyclable in a way that many substitute products are not.
	We have to face the reality that the world demand for those products will escalate, possibly dramatically. The world market for steel is 1.1 billion tonnes this year. It will increase to 1.2 billion tonnes next year and so on for the foreseeable future. In China alone, just 1 per cent. of the population own a car. If it gets anywhere near to the western equivalent of about 50 per cent., the implications for the use of steel and carbon emissions are breathtaking. However, as a nation that enjoys all those advantages, we cannot stand aside and lecture China, demanding that it does not progress in that way. We must find a cheaper method of producing steel and metal in a greener and more energy efficient way, and ensure that that technology and the processes are exported.
	Key to our success will be the development of the international emissions trading scheme. I welcome moves to set European-wide emissions targets of a 30 per cent. reduction by 2020 and a 60 per cent. reduction by 2050. However, for those to be effective and to have a substantial impact on future emissions, they must be international. The current emissions trading scheme needs to be refined to meet that challenge. The system estimates future levels of production and allocates carbon credits accordingly. Any production above that has to involve purchasing carbon credits from under-users. It is quite possible for a company to invest to increase its production, albeit by cleaner methods, but to have to buy carbon credits to accommodate that increased production. That involves a double cost—first, for the new investment, and secondly, for the additional carbon credits to accommodate the additional production. In addition, no incentive is built into the system for companies that keep within their production targets to reinvest to ensure that their processes become cleaner.
	The bottom line is that companies in this country could be penalised for expanding their production to meet rising world demand, while companies in other countries with higher levels of carbon emissions expand their production to meet the shortfall. The perverse consequences of that would be the loss of production here coupled with an overall increase in the level of carbon emissions internationally.
	I want to suggest a solution, which I know the industry is putting to the Minister and which involves adopting a sectoral approach. It would not penalise investment or increase production, but it would relate carbon credits to energy efficiency. In steel, it would mean that a series of CO2 emission factors could be calculated and then averaged according to the type of process used. At the end of the accounting period, each company would have its actual emissions assessed against its baseline figures and multiplied by the volume of steel produced. If a company's performance were worse than the baseline, it would have to buy allowances, and if its performance were better than the baseline, it would receive allowances for sale, thereby incentivising companies to reduce emissions and to increase profits. Furthermore, by recalculating the baseline downwards after each accounting period, the target would get tougher, which would provide a long-term drive for greater energy efficiency and a model that would enable companies from other countries to join.
	I welcome the current dialogue between my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and business to develop a unified position for phase 3 of the emissions trading scheme by 2012. I hope that he will take my remarks and argument on board as the most coherent way to make an international impact on carbon emissions.
	On the role of environmental technology and renewable energy in reducing carbon emissions, given the inevitability of global manufacturing expansion to meet the demands of developing economies, it is essential that we offset the increased carbon emissions from industry by reductions through environmental technology and consumer behaviour. There is a danger that environmentally friendly lifestyles will become synonymous with a reduced quality of life. People want to fly and travel, and although improvements in public transport can help, it is ultimately changes in technology that will assist lower carbon emissions without dramatic changes in people's quality of life. Education in more environmentally friendly lifestyles is necessary, but provision within the climate change Bill must go with the grain of people's aspirations and not frustrate them.
	My region, which is known as the black country, has been synonymous with heavy dirty industry, but it is now intent on driving the development of new environmental technologies. The Black Country chamber of commerce is holding an environmental technology summit in the new year with the intention of making the region a world leader in the field. Although research and development are vital to develop new products to reach those goals, there is a whole range of other Government functions that need to be changed to assist the process.
	A company in my constituency, Forkers Ltd., is in the vanguard of geothermal technology and heat pump products. The earth is a huge battery of energy that could be used to fuel new buildings. Amazingly, the use of geothermal energy in this country is very low at the moment, especially in comparison with Scandinavia and countries such as Iceland. Given the difficulties in developing wind farms and other forms of renewable energy, the Government need to concentrate on geothermal energy. We need to work with planners and developers and examine building regulations to ensure that where the technological potential exists, new buildings use geothermal energy to conserve energy from other sources.
	RegenCo, the vehicle for the regeneration of the black country, has ambitious plans for an environmental technology park near West Bromwich, but it needs cash and a commitment from local planners to prepare the site for development and to line up companies that are pioneering environmentally friendly and recyclable products. I trust that the Government will ensure that the regional development agency, working with the local agency, will develop that resource and play its part in changing the image of the black country from an area with traditional industries to one that is in the vanguard of new technologies.
	In conclusion, I congratulate the Government on both commissioning the Stern report and responding to it. Climate change legislation must reflect the scale of the challenge and cut across all Departments, because the matter is not only DEFRA's responsibility. We need investment in new technologies, education on changes in lifestyle and changes in planning priorities and, possibly, in tax priorities, too. It is for Departments to take a lead and, above all, it is for Britain to be a driver of change in both Europe and the rest of the world.

Alex Salmond: I will address some of the points made by the hon. Member for West Bromwich, West (Mr. Bailey) on carbon abatement, but first I want to express on behalf of the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru our condolences to the service families who have been mentioned by hon. Members on both sides of the House. Our thoughts are with those families and all those who have experienced recent losses in the current conflict.
	Our thoughts are also with the families of all right hon. and hon. Members who have died since the previous Queen's Speech, and I hope that the House will forgive me if I mention just three of them. First, Rachel Squire was an outstanding Member of Parliament. I never heard her in or outwith this place make a cheap political point in any political discussion—that can be said of few of us in our political careers—which was remarkable. Secondly, I had many conversations with Robin Cook about horse racing, and I wish that I had had more conversations with him about other matters. Thirdly, I think that I disagreed with every single thing that Eric Forth ever said politically, but I find myself missing all those comments that I disagreed with. We offer our condolences to all those families.
	Some have looked for the mark of Brown—the influence of the Chancellor—in this year's Queen's Speech. It is difficult to detect in most of the legislation, some of which seems familiar—the Government are going round and round in a "Groundhog Day" process. However, I detected the hand of the Chancellor in the two opening speeches of this debate. The first speech was made by a Welsh Member, who had a lot to say and who bemoaned Plaid Cymru and all its works—he did not like the Conservative party either. The second speech was made by a Scottish Member, who bemoaned the SNP and all its works, so it seems to me that there was an element of Brown management in the Queen's Speech debate.
	The speech by the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East (Rosemary McKenna) had the virtue of being humorous, and it was successful for that. However, I was puzzled by her point that she has relatives in England, Wales and Ireland, which she claimed is an argument for the United Kingdom. As I understand it, her relatives are in the Republic of Ireland, which is an independent country, but I do not think that the hon. Lady's contact with those relatives has been inhibited as a result of Irish independence.
	A few years ago, the Prime Minister addressed the Dail, where he pointed out that Ireland is an outstanding example of a small nation that leads Europe in so many ways. He received a standing ovation, which he is unlikely to receive ever again—at least in this House. I have often wondered why the Prime Minister cannot see his way to making the same point about Scotland's potential as a small European nation. In so many things, there is one rule for Ireland and another for Scotland.
	I agreed with the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) about his proposal for a freedom Bill—I call it the "Braveheart" Bill—that the Liberals intend to introduce. I am sure that I will avidly support that Liberal initiative, which I might take in directions not suspected by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife.
	There is no absolutely pleasant way to say this, so I shall say it anyway: I want to defend the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife against the attack made by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell). For those hon. Members were not present at the time, the suggestion was that the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife was lessening support for service families because he was arguing a case against the war in Iraq. I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman is not present to hear this directly. I doubt that there is a family in Scotland—even more so perhaps than in many other parts of this kingdom—and certainly not my family or that of the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife, who have not had immediate relatives killed in action or indeed serving in the armed forces. The right hon. and learned Gentleman's family member may be known to many of us, because he was played by Sir Sean Connery in "A Bridge Too Far"; that was his father-in-law. The reason why some of us are so hostile to what we regard as avoidable conflict is that very many of us see the consequences of such conflict.
	One of the proudest moments in my recent life occurred during the play "Black Watch", which took this year's Edinburgh festival by storm. It was the huge success of the festival, performed in a drill hall in Edinburgh. It was a squaddie's-eye view of the history of the regiment, throughout the conflicts of previous generations right back to the foundation of the regiment. It was an outstanding production by the National Theatre of Scotland. The company was kind enough in that production to show an extract from a parliamentary debate, from one of the speeches that I made about the war in Iraq. Those of us who argue that position really need no lectures from the hon. Member for Middlesbrough about our support for service people and service families, or our support for troops in action. And if people cannot argue a position in favour of a conflict without recourse to that sort of cheap argument, they would be better not to argue their position, against the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife or anyone else.
	In my opinion, one of the outstanding television moments of the 1980s was the confrontation between John Nott, as he was then, and Sir Robin Day on the Falklands conflict. Sir Robin asked why anybody should believe the then Defence Secretary because he was going to be a "here today, gone tomorrow" Defence Secretary. I remember it perhaps because John Nott, who was about to retire from politics, in a live interview flung off the microphone, said "I have had enough of this" and stomped out of the television studio. As I watched the here today, gone tomorrow Prime Minister during today's debate, I was dying for him to suddenly say, "I have had enough of this" and march out of the Commons. But no such luck. Chance would be a fine thing. He is clinging on by his fingernails, but we are in an unprecedented situation. As far as I know, never before in the history of this place or politics has a Prime Minister introduced a Queen's Speech when everyone knows that he will not be around to see the legislative programme through.
	There are a variety of opinions about how soon that departure should be. The Scottish First Minister revealed to the  Financial Times, and indeed on television at the weekend, that his preference was now for the Prime Minister to stay in office. I am sure that the Prime Minister will take that submission carefully into account when he decides his time scale for leaving either before or after the Scottish elections. Despite my best efforts to accelerate the departure in recent weeks, it looks as though the Prime Minister is clinging on there. So we are on unprecedented ground.
	We are also in uncharted waters because, as I understand it, the current position of the Prime Minister is that when he is interviewed, perhaps under caution, by the Metropolitan police he still intends to stay in office in Downing street—no doubt on the grounds that everybody must be innocent until proven guilty. If things come to such a pretty pass I think that Opposition Members will insist on a jury trial, because a jury is an essential defence of people's rights, even up to the Prime Minister. We are in unprecedented times and in uncharted waters, but no one can underrate the Prime Minister's determination to stay in office. Of course he could claim that these things illustrate that he has not lost his appetite for constitutional innovation; certainly it is innovative constitutionally for a Prime Minister to stay in office under these circumstances.
	As I promised, I shall say a little about my hopes for the climate change Bill. It is remarkable that, on a measure that I thought would obtain consensus across the House and given the scale of the challenge that is faced, the front page of today's  Independent should point out that all the political parties in these islands are on one side and the Prime Minister is standing on the other, shoulder to shoulder with the United Kingdom Independence party, in opposing an annual register of the impacts of carbon emissions. I am not certain why the Prime Minister is so adamant about that; no doubt we shall find out during the passage of the Bill.

Alex Salmond: That is an excellent point. Aha!
	I think my main point stands, in terms of that dramatic front page in  The Independent. I cannot understand why the Prime Minister has chosen to isolate himself on this point on a measure on which, presumably, he is trying to generate cross-party consensus given its importance. Certainly that has been the rhetoric. I am interested to see whether the rhetoric on this will match that on other policy issues and the Government's attitude to other matters.
	Let us take for example globalisation, for which the Prime Minister is a huge enthusiast, as is the Chancellor. I have here a press cutting which describes what is happening at present in Annan in south-west Scotland. Young's Seafood is cutting 120 jobs in a processing plant. It processes Scottish langoustines—prawns to the uninitiated. We are now calling them Scottish langoustines because they command a substantial premium in the French and Spanish markets. The proposal is to send 600 tonnes of langoustine each year to Thailand, where they will be processed, and then sent back to Scotland for packaging and sent to France or Spain and other lucrative markets. That is the impact of globalisation and the fact that people in Thailand are paid 25p an hour. The carbon impact of what seems a crazy policy is that 47,500 tonnes of carbon dioxide are produced by each shipment that goes across the planet and back again to be re-exported.
	I have this question for the Government. In their enthusiasm for globalisation, it should be accepted that some aspects of globalisation will conflict with carbon emissions targets aimed at saving the planet. And in a market that is created— [Interruption.] I can hear another correction coming from the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris). And in a market that is created in these matters, the Government must have some kind of—in the Prime Minister's old phrase—joined-up government.
	I want to offer a couple of additional illustrations of this point. The hon. Member for West Bromwich, West spoke about the carbon market and carbon abatement. At present there is the potential for the north-east of Scotland, and indeed the north-east of England, to lead technology on carbon capture and carbon abatement. At Peterhead we have a billion-dollar project that is just awaiting the signal on how carbon reduction will be treated within the climate change or other legislation. That is a project for the separation of methane and carbon dioxide into hydrogen, with a hydrogen clean-burn power station—not a hydrogen nuclear station but a hydrogen gas station: the onset of the hydrogen economy. The carbon dioxide would then be put back into an oilfield in the North sea, getting 20 million barrels of extra oil out of the oilfield. It is a billion-dollar investment that would impress even the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West. That project is available, awaiting a signal. It is world-leading; and perhaps, because carbon capture offers immediately huge substantial gains in terms of carbon reduction, it might even be planet-saving.
	I just hope that the policy of climate change is carried through into all aspects of Government policy. Presently, for example, Ofgem charges for electricity connections to the grid—we are not talking about transport costs—at the rate of £20 or more a kilowatt in the north of Scotland where the opportunities for alternative renewables and carbon capture technology are huge. In inner London, where the opportunities for windmills and other alternative energies might exist but are much fewer, there is a £6 a kilowatt subsidy because Ofgem is keen to encourage new power stations in inner London, despite the fact that resource economics tell us that vast opportunities lie elsewhere. It is another example to show that, if we want to seize the opportunities, Government policies must be connected or wired up properly.

Alex Salmond: But that is not the reason for the locational charging of Ofgem. The reason is that it has calculated where it wants power stations to be and is sending out market signals. A former Member of the House, David Ricardo, arguably the greatest economist England ever produced, developed a theory of comparative advantage and put it forward here. Ofgem economists seem never to have read David Ricardo, as if he wasted his time in developing his economic work. Ofgem argues that it is entitled to send out market signals so that it can dictate where power stations should or should not be. That is nonsense. Transportation costs across the grid are not acceptable, but Ofgem is trying to influence where power stations should be located. It is a disastrous policy. According to Talisman Energy, which is developing a gigawatt—1,000 MW—deep offshore wind farm in the Moray Firth, that policy is the single greatest impediment to the commercial viability of its project. It is daft policy, which conflicts with other policies and needs to be changed.

Alex Salmond: My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. The cock crowed three times for Ofgem economists, who three times refused to acknowledge that the Government's own targets for renewable energy should, when it came to decisions such as locational charging, play any part in their framework. That is nonsensical, as I have said. Hon. Members have been waiting for some time. I see that there is plenty of time left on the clock, but I have only a couple of further brief points before I come to my final main point.
	I had an exchange earlier with the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), who was kind enough to say that he agreed that the Home Office was perhaps suffering from a surfeit of legislation and a lack of implementation. After a quick check, I found that out of 57 Home Office Bills over the last 10 years, only 36 applied to Scotland. We have missed out on 21 of those marvellous pieces of Home Office legislation. I have to say that I do not feel that Scotland is any less safe as a result of missing out on those legislative provisions.
	I believe that the administrative "not fit for purpose" argument may have some relationship to the legislative flow, which must be committing huge amounts of Home Office administrative time in order to cope with what amounts to an average of five and a half pieces of legislation every year. The permanent revolution in legislative competence over those last 10 years cannot be contributing to the efficiency of the Department. There are many other issues, but that is certainly one of them and we hope that, at some stage, the Government will recognise it.

Andrew Robathan: The question I ask is who would want to be a judge. The law keeps changing dramatically in so many ways every year, so it must be extremely difficult for a sensible judge sitting in court in Scotland or in England to remember the changes in law in any particular year.

Alex Salmond: The Home Secretary is always in charge of anything he is doing. He may not be in charge for too long, as he has a habit of moving on, but whenever he is at the head of a Department, he is certainly in charge, so perhaps the hon. Gentleman should address his questions to that particular right hon. Member.
	Finally, I want to deal with Iraq. Making the Loyal Address on 20 February 1923, a Mr. Lambert, speaking for the Liberal party, which was not the official Opposition at the time, moved an amendment to the effect that
	"we humbly suggest there should be an immediate and drastic curtailment of British responsibilities in Mesopotamia."
	He spoke to his amendment, stating:
	"In the last Parliament, thanks to the brilliant oratorical imagery of Mr. Winston Churchill, who conjured up visions of a new millennium, the resurrection of Nebuchadnezzar and the rebuilding of Nineveh, the facts were somewhat obscured. To-day I hope we shall come down from the soaring mists of imagination to solid earth. When an advance was made to Basra in 1914, it was a very proper precaution, and I suggest that it would be unwise if we now evacuated that port. But since then our advance into Mesopotamia has been one of long misfortune, mingled with some momentary and futile triumphs. The Mesopotamian policy throughout has been disastrous strategically and profligate financially."—[ Official Report, 20 February 1923; Vol. 160, c. 865.]
	It should be said that it was less bloody than the current policy in Iraq.
	On the subject of the lessons of history, it is clear that the Prime Minister does not have much time for the subject. He is always talking about the future, although as I listened to the Labour conference, I understood that he recognises that he is not the future for long. The lessons of history would have been very useful for the Prime Minister over the last few years. He would have benefited from looking at the lessons from our previous policy in Mesopotamia.
	I find it extraordinary that the House should tolerate the position in which a Prime Minister considers it proper to give video evidence to a congressional commission in the United States of America, yet does not think it a requirement of a Prime Minister who has led this country into a disastrous conflict over a period of three years to state his strategy to Parliament or the people. That is truly extraordinary, regardless of the politics of whether people are for or against the war and regardless of a variety of notions about how to extract ourselves from the nightmare. It seems to me that those who have led us into this blood-soaked quagmire have something of a responsibility to tell the rest of us how they intend to extricate us from it.
	In common with many hon. Members, I have received many representations on the issue. Today I received a phone call and subsequent e-mail from Dr. Kamal Ketuly, who is chairman of the committee for the release of hostages and detainees in Iraq and who has campaigned since 1980. He suffered grievously under the Saddam regime and opposed it as eloquently as he could both internationally and here in this country at a time when British Governments were rather friendly to that regime. Speaking as a Kurd about the present situation, he says that his views have been "sidelined". He continues by saying that
	"serious mistakes have been made in Iraq which has now led to the establishment of the Iraq study group to try to find a solution for the current escalation of violence and the disintegration of the country."
	I have never heard him more distressed or concerned about the current position. He has never been more convinced of the disastrous nature of the present strategy, particularly when there is no end game whatever, just a continuation of the present disaster.
	Evidence from Carne Ross to the Foreign Affairs Committee last week is also revealing. If anyone doubts that the dossier was sexed up, I would advise them to read the evidence of that former high-ranking diplomat, who was closely involved in the preparation of the Foreign Office position. One particular point is worthy of repetition, so I shall quote from a BBC news report:
	"In other evidence to the committee, Mr Ross said the Foreign Office's official view before the build-up to war began was that an invasion would lead to 'chaos'."
	That was the official Foreign Office view at the time. That forecast, which did not remain the official view, has unfortunately proved only too correct.
	We have been told by the Prime Minister—this has been repeated by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough and others and refuted in excellent terms by the former Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), even though I did not agree with his proposals—that it is somehow not possible for us to inquire, investigate and have a strategic rethink or assessment of the position in Iraq because that would send the wrong signals to our armed forces. In that case, how is it possible for America to have not one, but two current inquiries and assessments—the congressional one and now the White House one that was announced today—into the Iraqi policy? How is it possible that the nearly 200,000 American men in Iraq are not demoralised by the assessments going on in the United States but that our, by comparison, limited force will be demoralised by the thought that Parliament is investigating or demanding from the Executive a reassessment of strategy? The only thing that demoralises our forces in Iraq and elsewhere is the idea that their elected representatives have been reduced to mere ciphers who meekly accept any nonsense that comes forward and do not do their constitutional duty of demanding from the Government an account, rethink, strategic assessment and exit strategy from this appalling, bloody quagmire into which they have led us.
	I see nothing in this Queen's speech that will be strong enough, big enough or firm enough to provide the legacy for which the Prime Minister is so obviously waiting. As the former leader of the Liberal party, the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr. Kennedy), once said, I believe that regardless of what the Prime Minister does, the one word carved on his political tombstone will be "Iraq", and deservedly so.

Kevan Jones: I congratulate the mover and the seconder of the response to the Gracious Speech and associate myself with Members' remarks about those who have recently died serving this country in Iraq.
	I also pay tribute to the four Members who have died in the past year or so. In doing so, I wish to refer to the same three that the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) mentioned. I had the privilege to serve with Rachel Squire on the Select Committee on Defence. She was not only a decent human being but a great parliamentarian who had amassed a great knowledge of defence. She not only defended the interests of her constituency but worked on the international stage by serving on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Throughout her work and her long and debilitating illness, she expressed her forthright views.
	I also wish to refer Eric Forth, with whom, politically, I had nothing in common. You might ask, Madam Deputy Speaker, how and why Eric Forth came to cross my path. It occurred in the previous Parliament on the last day of consideration of my private Member's Bill—the Christmas Day (Trading) Bill. For some reason unknown to me, initially Eric was sympathetic to my Bill. I think that was more to do with the fact that if my Bill succeeded, which it did, it would stop the following Bill, which had been introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore).
	As I got to know Eric, it became clear to me that the views he expressed in the Chamber and his public persona were completely different from how he was in private. He was a very genuine individual who cared deeply about his constituents and about the causes that he was passionate about. Someone asked me whether politics is getting boring these days and it certainly is with the passing of characters such as Eric Forth. I can sum up my view only by saying it is a bit like toothache. We miss it when it is gone. That is what I would say about Eric.
	Robin Cook was a great parliamentarian and tributes have been paid to him by Members on both sides who recalled his contribution to the debates in the House and his opposition to the war in Iraq. My first recollection of him goes back to before I become a Member of Parliament. In 1991, Robin and I were campaigning in the Monmouth by-election when new Labour was unfortunately in its beginnings. We had a programme of campaigning set out for the day, but I hasten to add that we spent the afternoon at Chepstow races. We were all better off for that given the betting advice that we received from the former Member for Livingston.
	I wish to concentrate on three aspects of the Queen's Speech—the legal services Bill, the draft road transport Bill and the local government Bill. I welcome the introduction of a legal services Bill to set up a legal services board. For far too long, the legal profession has been left to regulate itself. The Law Society has been the best closed shop in the country. When the Conservatives—some would say rightly—outlawed the closed shop in the 1980s, they unfortunately left the legal profession to its own devices. I associate myself with the conclusions of the Clementi review, which said that the current framework was
	"outdated, inflexible, over-complex and insufficiently accountable or transparent".
	My dealings over the past five and half years on behalf of constituents who have been claiming under the excellent Government scheme for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease have given me countless examples in which consumers have received not only poor service from the legal profession, but in many cases have been ripped off by the very people who were supposed to act in my constituents' best interests, but clearly did not.
	Most people have, thank God, little contact with the legal profession. Unfortunately, most of them think that if they engage a solicitor or legal professional, they should somehow trust them. The COPD scheme involves people, including the elderly and the vulnerable, who are not used to dealing with solicitors. Numerous scams have been exposed under the scheme and I hope that the legal services board will be able to deal with them. I shall mention three.
	The first scam is overcharging. Under the COPD scheme all the fees for solicitors' work are met by the Government, but, not content with that, many greedy solicitors—including firms such as Mark Gilbert Morse, which I exposed in the Chamber two years ago—were then going to take another 25 per cent. in charges from individuals' compensation. Many of the people involved were elderly constituents of mine or widows who had suffered long and hard for that compensation, and taking compensation off them was a clear rip-off. Thankfully, the Law Society took quite a tough line and I also congratulate the Government on the hard line that they took. However, I am not convinced that everyone has got their money back. One of the problems is that unless people complain, they do not get their money back. I shall refer to that later.
	Another scam—I do not mind calling it that—is the relationship between firms of solicitors and third parties such as claims handlers. I congratulate the Government on the Compensation Bill that they introduced in the previous Session, which now regulates claims handlers. However, I want the legal services board to take some control over the relationships between solicitors and claims handlers.
	I have an example from the north-east. A company in Newcastle, Watson Burton, worked in collusion with a claims handler, P and R Associates of Sunderland, to deduct £325,000 from victims' compensation and pass it on to P and R Associates even though there was no need for the clients to use a third party. It is important that this sector is regulated and what solicitors can and cannot do and how they advise clients is made clear.
	I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) has worked for Thompsons solicitors, but I condemn the firm for its relationship with the Durham National Union of Mineworkers. The firm took 7.5 per cent. of people's compensation at the conclusion of their cases. This is an area where things need to be made quite clear.
	Another issue is the inconsistent way in which claims and other matters are dealt with. Solicitors vary tremendously. Unfortunately, many people go to solicitors and think that they will get the same service across the board. That does not happen in different specialisms, but it also does not happen under the COPD scheme. One of the scandals is the under-settling of COPD claims. The solicitors range from Thompsons, who get the maximum compensation for people under the scheme—I have to give credit for that—to others such as Watson Burton, the solicitors in Newcastle. According to a written answer I received a few weeks ago, the average COPD claim is £4,978. For some unknown reason, Watson Burton's average is only £4,123. I understand that my concentration on Watson Burton irritates those involved, but, as I said, I got the information from a written answer. Unfortunately, Northeast Press and, I am sad to say, even the  The Journal seem to be timid about reporting any of that. I hope that it is not a threat from those solicitors—in relation to withdrawing advertising revenue and other things from the papers—that is gagging them and making sure that the information is not put into the public domain.
	The COPD scheme has been a feeding frenzy for greedy solicitors. I hope that, when the legal services board is introduced, it can look back at some of the examples that my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) and I have raised of the way in which solicitors have handled claims, to see what can be done to protect the individual client. The legal services board needs to have at its heart not the solicitor but the consumer. It also has to set down a clear framework of what a solicitor will provide to a client or consumer. The language needs to be considered and the charges to the consumer should be spelled out.
	It is also important that the legal services board concentrates on the relationship between solicitors and third parties. Earlier, I raised the issue of the relationship with claims handlers. The board needs to look at that, and at the messy and murky business of referral fees—fees that are paid to organisations, including, for example the Automobile Association, to refer people's claims to certain firms of solicitors. Individuals under insurance policies should have the freedom to pick and choose their solicitors. There should not be bulk selling of legal claims to certain firms of solicitors, with organisations such as the AA and others receiving larges amount of money for doing that.
	Another issue that needs to be looked at is how people get redress when they have problems with a firm of solicitors. At the moment, the Law Society will look at individual complaints. My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw and I have made a record number of complaints to the Law Society. I think that he beat me last year, but I hope to beat him this year. It is frustrating for me and others that, time and again, it is the same complaint against the same solicitors, the same individual issues and the same solicitors defrauding people of money under the scheme. What is needed is a mechanism whereby the legal services board can not only react to individual complaints, but, if it finds that a firm of solicitors is continually doing the same thing, it can look across the board and make a judgment against that firm to repay the money. I hope that can be taken on board.
	Last week, I received a letter from Alison Crawley, director of regulation compliance at the Law Society, who said that the society supports that. Her letter states:
	"We have recently written to the DTI and the DCA to indicate that, primarily from our experience in miners' compensation cases, we would wish to include a provision in the Legal Services Bill to enable restitutionary orders to be made in a disciplinary context...This would mean, for example, that if a firm were found to have made improper deductions it would not be necessary for all clients to complain in order for them to obtain redress".
	That is vital. There are still many people out there who have had money deducted by unscrupulous solicitors and have not got it back because they do not know that they have to make a claim. Under the Bill—I may even move an amendment if this provision is not included—that power of the legal services board should be retrospective, so that we can make sure that people are paid back the money that has already been deducted by firms such as Mark Gilbert Morse and others.
	The consumer has to be at the heart of the Bill. The information for people going to solicitors has to be clear. The judgments in complaints made against solicitors have to be made public. At the moment, that does not have to happen, but it is vital that people know if complaints have been made against a firm of solicitors. There should be the power to close firms if malpractice that is defrauding clients is found. I am talking not just about the usual complaint relating to firms dipping into clients' funds, but about some of the malpractice that has been exposed under the COPD scheme. More importantly, the legal services board has to be seen to be independent from the legal profession. I hope that if we can do that, we will have a new system of regulation that puts the consumer—not lawyers and the Law Society—at the heart of the relationship.
	The second issue that I would like to raise relates to the draft road transport Bill and the problem of buses. In the 1980s—1986—the Conservative party believed in the free market economics that led to the nonsense that we unfortunately still see today. I am talking about the deregulation of buses outside London. The idea was possibly that competition would lead to more efficiency and better services, but in fact in North Durham it has led to a worse service. Two companies, Arriva and Go North East, have a monopoly not only in Durham, but across the north-east. People will be told that competition can be opened up, but in practice those two companies have a monopoly.
	In rural constituencies such as mine that led to bus services being completely withdrawn. If someone in one of the rural villages in my constituency has not got a car, a bus is not a luxury—it is a necessity to get to work, or anywhere else. Time and again, Go North East and Arriva withdraw services and simply say to the county council, "Well, if you need to provide a bus service in that area, can you give us some subsidy?" Alas—I do not know whether the companies fear that regulation is going to be introduced—over the past few months there seems to have been a spate of Arriva and Go North East in Durham stripping out services and concentrating on the main routes in the area.
	I attended a public meeting on Monday night in Great Lumley in my constituency. There were more than 70 people complaining about the withdrawal of the 21 bus from Great Lumley to Newcastle. That is in addition to other buses such as the 177 and 178 to Bournmoor. That has led to a poorer service. Whole areas have been left without buses, or with no direct bus routes to major towns. For example, the 720 has been withdrawn, which severely affects Beamish, West Pelton, East Stanley and Grange Villa. There is no direct bus from the city of Durham to one of the major tourist attractions in my constituency, Beamish open air museum. The response that we get all the time is that those routes are not profitable. It is quite clear that unless some type of regulation is put back in, the bus companies are not going to supply those communities.
	Even worse, even in the urban areas in my constituency, the companies have stripped out buses that do not go on direct routes. For example, in Hilda Park and other parts of Great Lumley, buses that used to go round the estate and pick people up no long do so; they stay on the main road. An elderly person in one of those communities walking to catch a bus might as well be a million miles away from the nearest bus stop.
	The attitude of Go North East has changed. At the public meeting on Monday night, Peter Huntley, the chief executive, was accused by the audience of being not honest, but I have to say that he was far too honest for my liking. He admitted that Go North East's strategy now is to concentrate on profit and the routes that generate it, which marks a huge change from a few years ago, when Go North East had some sort of social conscience. Clearly the company does not have one today.
	I understand that the Bill offers the potential for pilot schemes. May I stress that we do not need any more pilot schemes? What we need is action. We need regulation of buses and, more importantly, we need to ensure that local people have a say in their bus services. Go North East conducts sham consultations: it will accept umpteen petitions, but still go ahead with its plans. One example of that was its withdrawal of the 21A bus from Great Lumley. A well publicised meeting was held—

Ian Taylor: I harbour no ill will toward the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones), but listening to parts of his speech I found it easier to understand why the north-east rejected the regional assembly. Leaving that aside, I am sure that we can make up over a drink in the Members' Bar.
	The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) made some telling points. He used the word "groundhog" and there is a sense of "Groundhog Day" about today. The Queen's Speeches of the past few years have all had the same texture and the same feel. Here let me pay a genuine tribute to the Prime Minister: his enthusiasm every Session for what he must realise is a speech that, in a way, exists to repeat the failures of the previous Queen's Speech is quite remarkable. His air of get up and go on the morning that we open the new Session of Parliament is probably the reason why he has lasted so long—indeed, today I almost had the sense that he wants to continue. There was a frisson that suggested that this would not be his last Queen's Speech after all.

Ian Taylor: I am about to come to that subject, on which the hon. Gentleman and I agree to a great extent. None the less, I simply wished to draw the House's attention to the fact that the Prime Minister did not appear to be a man who is about to give up. I am not sure that we have said farewell to him, and the Labour party had better sort out the matter fairly quickly. The Speaker's ruling means that I cannot go deeper into that subject, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I shall not attempt to do so.
	Iraq is the key issue. I was one of those Opposition Members who voted against going into Iraq. It is unfortunate when hon. Members spend their time saying, "I told you so," but it is necessary to remind the House that those of us, such as the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan, myself and others, who before we went to war set out in the House the reasons why we should not do so find it difficult to hear people now say, "Oh, if we had only known what would happen, we would not have done it." In February 2003, I asked the Prime Minister whether he had had talks with President Bush about the fact that
	"the danger of quickly settling Saddam Hussein could unleash other terrorism as a result of the destabilisation in Iraq".—[ Official Report, 3 February 2003; Vol. 399, c. 31.]
	In a later debate, I said that the Foreign Secretary needed to
	"recognise that many of us believe that the United States, having looked for Osama bin Laden, has quickly focused on the tangible target of Saddam Hussein, and that the irony is that the person who will be most pleased in the next few days is Osama bin Laden because of the risk from terrorism".—[ Official Report, 17 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 710.]
	I shall not indulge myself by repeating speeches that I made before the war. I simply want to point out that the Prime Minister has put us in a position such that it is improbable that we will leave that country with a victory. We went in as an invading army. We did not go in as liberators, nor were we seen as such. Even the Prime Minister has redefined the cause of the war—he did so today when he said that he was proud that Saddam Hussein had been removed. However, none of us in the House admired Saddam Hussein. Before the war, when the Prime Minister said the same thing, I asked him in the House whether the reason for the war was to remove Saddam Hussein or because of the danger of weapons of mass destruction. He replied that the real reason was weapons of mass destruction. That is all in  Hansard.
	The tragedy for the Prime Minister is that he has never really faced up to the fact that we got in there for the wrong reasons. If we, as a country, made that admission, it might be possible to find a more realistic solution to the problem. As it happens, I am not one of those who is saying that we must pull our troops out now, come what may. My elder son was a young officer in Iraq at the end of the last year, and he is preparing to go to Afghanistan. I thus have a personal perspective, but I did not know that he was even thinking of joining the Army when I spoke before the war broke out.
	It is likely that we cannot leave with self-respect. The danger is that our troops will be left in the firing line for some months while we work out how we can reasonably try to get them out and what justification we will give. That is my worry about the Iraq crisis. Let us not spend our time going back and working out why we went in. Our intellectual effort should be put into determining how we can get out while leaving the middle east as stable as possible. Unfortunately, the two cannot be disentangled. By entering in the way that we did, we have made the position in the middle east worse, and the crisis in Iraq today will reverberate.
	It is interesting that we are now resorting to pleading with axis of evil countries— Syria and Iran—to see whether they can help to resolve the situation. The idea that Iran was a disinterested observer of the Iraqi situation is absurd. We armed Iraq in the 1980s because Iran was a threat. More than 1 million people were killed in the war at that time. The Shi'a were constantly suppressed so that they would not do a deal with Iran, so it is not surprising that one of the countries that we were apparently, according to the American President, putting on our hate list is now doing a deal with parts of a country that we have fragmented because of our efforts. The danger is that we will withdraw, leaving the Shi'a to do a deal with Iran, which would destabilise the rest of the Gulf states and, probably, Saudi Arabia. That would have untold consequences for energy.
	Energy security is a vital issue. In my view, our energy supplies are now less secure because of the problems that we face in the middle east. One of our biggest energy suppliers is Russia. The way in which Putin is beginning to use energy as a political weapon should cause us considerable concern. It will be interesting to see whether G8 involvement and inviting Russia into an increasing number of the councils of the world leads to a more rational approach to energy policy in Russia. We need to consider what is happening to the oil majors through the various unilateral renegotiations of their contracts in the Russian territory, let alone the pipeline problems that are affecting Poland, Ukraine, Georgia and the surrounding region.
	If the UK is to seek a long-term diversity of energy sources, and thus security, it is inconceivable that we should not regard nuclear power as one of the key players. We already have nuclear power. A constituent wrote to me saying that they would never use nuclear power in their house, but they are doing so. Indeed, we are importing such power from France anyway because of our energy shortage.
	Nuclear power is not something that we will suddenly be able to decide is needed in a few years' time if renewable energy supplies do not work properly. It involves a long-term programme, and calculations are made on the basis of a 15 to 20-year return on investment. There are all sorts of other problems, by the way. I learned only recently, during one of my visits to universities, that because of climate change, it is probable that coastal erosion will be such that it will not be safe to build on any of the existing nuclear sites on the east coast of Britain. That will cause planning problems, if we want to build nuclear sites elsewhere.
	The Government courageously said in their energy policy that they would accelerate the planning process for nuclear power. Less courageously, they have said that the renewables obligation will not be available. They have also been very unclear about the carbon trading benefits that might come to nuclear power, bearing in mind that nuclear power is not only a source of energy, but has reduced emissions when measured in any comparable way against fossil fuels.

Tony Baldry: But we must consider not only the cost of building nuclear power stations, but the cost of the contingent liability of decommissioning nuclear power stations at the end of their lives. Did my hon. Friend notice that the Prime Minister completely failed to answer a very simple question: who is going to pay for that? In the absence of any clarity, one must assume that the Government expect the taxpayer to pick up that bill. It has been made quite clear that the City of London and private investors simply will not invest in nuclear power if they will have to deal with the contingent liabilities of decommissioning nuclear power stations at the end of their lives.

Ian Taylor: The hon. Gentleman puts his finger precisely on the reason why the Government are behaving so hypocritically. What he said was textually correct, but intellectual nonsense. I am astonished that a man as bright as him has put such a thing forward. In reality, if one cannot provide the conditions for investment to happen, it will not happen. However, if nuclear power is to be an essential component of diverse energy resources, we must make that happen. What he says is thus unacceptable.

Rob Marris: What a pleasure it is to follow that thoughtful speech from the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor), although I disagree with quite a bit of what he said. To finish—from my side anyway—the exchange that he kindly allowed me on nuclear power, I suggest to him that nuclear power is dinosaur technology. It has been around for 50 years and it has been subsidised greatly all over the world. There is nowhere in the world where nuclear power has been installed without huge public subsidy, and after 50 years it cannot be made to work economically, nor do I think that that will be possible. As the hon. Gentleman posited, that might turn out to be the case with many renewables, but the jury is still out. As the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) said, if renewables had received anything like the subsidy that the nuclear industry has had, we would have had the answer to that question, and I think that it would have been a positive for renewables.
	I must refer the hon. Member for Esher and Walton to an extremely important point that he did not touch on when he was, in a sense, trying to discover my position—conserving energy. I refer him also to an excellent paper by Dr. Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain institute on the opportunity cost of nuclear power. Nuclear power, on many calculations, is bad for the environment and bad for climate change because the opportunity cost of spending the money that would need to be spent on new nuclear power stations could have greater effect in relation to cutting emissions were it put into renewables and, in particular, energy conservation.
	On the Queen's Speech itself, I wrote to the Leader of the House four or five weeks ago—in my usual inimitable style, I suppose—suggesting that, after nine and a half years of a Labour Government, who have passed many excellent pieces of legislation, some good ones and a few poor ones, there should be no legislation whatever in the Queen's Speech this year and that the Government should concentrate on implementing the legislation and the changes that we have already introduced, which have thus far made a considerable improvement to life for many, if not everyone, in the United Kingdom.
	Unfortunately, and totally to my surprise, the Government did not accept that submission and we had a Queen's Speech today with a large number of Bills included in it. If we have to have a Queen's Speech—it seems that we do; it is the will of the Government to introduce yet more legislation—this is not a bad one. I want to focus on one aspect of climate change, adaptation, that never gets discussed in the House, and which, as some hon. Members present will know, is my bugbear. In one sense, I am building on remarks made by, for example, my hon. Friend the Member for Tyne Bridge (Mr. Clelland) and the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond), and particularly by my near neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, West (Mr. Bailey). Of course, cutting emissions is important, but I will not spend much time on that because all hon. Members are at least aware of the issues involved, although they might have different views on how to tackle those and what measures would be desirable. However, it is worth bearing in mind what has already happened and what will almost inevitably happen.
	Thus far, the United Kingdom has a great record on cutting emissions and on global leadership on the issue. Even in the UK, however, carbon dioxide emissions have risen in the past six years. The International Energy Agency predicts an increase in world energy demand of 60 per cent. by 2030, with an implicit 62 per cent. rise in emissions. The Prime Minister referred to the question of China, saying that if we cut our emissions—2 per cent. of the world total—to zero tomorrow, that would be taken up, if the current trajectory of increase in Chinese emissions continued, in less than two years. In fact, the time frame is 15 months.

Rob Marris: On one level, that is very nice for my hon. Friend; on another, it is distinctly and disturbingly worrying.
	According to the National Trust, we have a particular problem with beech trees, which, it says, are at the edge of their tolerance. The 720-tree beech avenue at Kingston Lacy is susceptible to drought and, the National Trust notes,
	"summer rainfall has reduced by 20 per cent. since 1990."
	The National Trust is an extremely important body in this regard. Not only does it have the sorts of properties to which I have referred, but it cares for one tenth of the coast of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It notes,
	"UK sea levels have risen by around 10 cm since 1990"
	That is a huge rise. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs research indicates that about 10 per cent. of the population of England and Wales live within areas potentially at risk from flooding or coastal erosion, in properties valued at £220 billion. The Environment Agency's budget for flood defences has increased by 35 per cent. in real terms. I will return to that point, however, because it is not doing enough. DEFRA has found that erosion of the north Norfolk coast has been five times worse than Government studies predicted 10 years ago. Climate change, which is already causing huge damage, is accelerating. The climate change Bill should address issues of adaptation as well as emissions, and deal with effects as well as causes.
	The UK climate impacts programme—a group of, I think, 15 research scientists located in Oxford and funded by DEFRA—has come up with a model of a low emissions future and a high emissions future. The high emissions future looks pretty bleak. By 2080, sea levels in south-west Scotland will have risen by 50 to 60 cm, or 2 ft; in north-east England by 66 cm; on the rest of the east coast by 77 cm; in the south-east by 74 cm; and in Wales by 80 cm. The low emissions scenario projected is that by 2080 the sea will have risen by 20 cm, and in some places less than that, but there will still have been a considerable rise. As was adverted to earlier, that could put some current nuclear power station sites at risk.
	In the Chamber, and I think it fair to say in the country, we still have a huge blind spot about adaptation—about dealing with effects. The CBI produced quite a good brief called "Delivering for business and the environment" in July this year. It contains six principles on climate change, all of which deal with causes rather than effects. That is the kind of blinkered mentality that we are seeing. We are seeing only half the equation.
	I was delighted to receive recently from AXA Insurance a document entitled "Climate change and its effects on small businesses in the UK". AXA has also produced quite a good pamphlet for small and medium-sized enterprises, which I do not have with me tonight, on dealing with the effects of climate change. Page 6 of "Climate change and its effects on small businesses in the UK" shows a graph of a survey of businesses. It asked them:
	"How helpful or otherwise was each of the following when your business was affected by a severe weather event?"
	I have to say that the findings do not make good reading for my Government. Admittedly, the document was produced by AXA, but according to the graph 66 per cent. of businesses thought that an insurance company had been helpful. The other percentages were 44 per cent. for the emergency services, 39 per cent. for a local utility company, 38 per cent. for the local council, 27 per cent. for the Environment Agency or the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, and 12 per cent. for central Government.
	The Government must do more by taking a leadership role, and they are starting to do so. "The UK Climate Change Programme", published by DEFRA in March this year, is a step forward, but only 11 of its 193 pages deal with adaptation to climate change, although there are scattered references to it on one or two other pages.
	I mentioned the climate impact programme research team in Oxford. The DEFRA document also mentions it. What we do not know from the research is whether we in the United Kingdom will end up with a Mediterranean climate, as I suspect many of our constituents fondly hope—particularly in southern England and the midlands, where my constituency is—or whether, as I suspect, although I am not a scientist, we will end up with what I call a Newfoundland climate. If the Gulf stream is diverted, we will have a Newfoundland climate. We will not be growing olives and grapes, as people are beginning to in the west midlands; we will be scratching out a living on root vegetables and so on.
	I must say to the Government what I have said in the Chamber on several occasions—and they are starting to move; I give them credit for that—that I regard 11 pages out of 193 on adaptation to climate change as only half the equation, and not good enough. I believe that 45 of the 711 pages in the Stern report—I speak from memory—deal with the subject, a similar proportion to that in the DEFRA document published in March. Members will not be surprised to learn that I have not read all of the Stern report. The adaptation stuff is a step forward, but only a small step forward. I am glad that Stern took it up, but we need to take it up much more urgently.
	It is all very well having a broad consensus in the House, as we do, on the need to do our bit in the United Kingdom to control the 2 per cent. of world emissions that we create. It is all very well having a broad consensus, as we do, on the need for the United Kingdom to have a leadership role and to build on the leadership that we have already displayed on the world stage. But we are missing half the equation, and it is the half—adaptation—over which the United Kingdom has total control. We cannot stop China, India or the United States from spewing out emissions, although we can encourage and cajole them to do so. We can put our own emissions house in order, but we have no control over other countries. However, we have total control over adaptation in the United Kingdom.

Tony Baldry: This has been a fascinating day. The conduct of the debate has convinced me, if ever I needed convincing, that the Opposition can win the next general election. Very few Labour Members were present for the opening speeches. The Whips have managed to muster only about six Labour Members to speak in the debate and those who have spoken have effectively conducted a filibuster. The hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell) spoke for 24 minutes. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Purchase) and the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) spoke for 17 minutes each. The hon. Member for West Bromwich, West (Mr. Bailey) spoke for 24 minutes. The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) spoke for 24 minutes, too. He was so desperate to filibuster that he went around every single bus route in his constituency. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) spoke for nearly half an hour. Not one of those Members practically has addressed any of the key issues of Afghanistan, Iraq and criminal justice. As my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor) said, this is groundhog day. It is a Government party hollowing out.
	This is going to be a strange parliamentary Session. We are all going to feel like characters in "Waiting for Gordo". The Government are in limbo. Ministers are preoccupied with which of them will be the next Deputy Prime Minister. Junior Ministers are fretting as to their futures under the next dispensation, and permanent secretaries and officials are uncertain as to which policies it is worth taking forward, and what is going to be changed at the end of the year, or whenever by a new Prime Minister. All that is against the background of the multiple uncertainties of a comprehensive public spending review. That is no way to run a country.
	I suspect that normal political life will not start again until the pre-Budget report and the spending review due next year, both of which will be the start of the Brown era. We are about to enter a gap year, a strange parliamentary vacuum, with the Government treading water. That has been clearly demonstrated by the conduct of the debate today.
	Of course, until the Prime Minister goes, the Government and, more importantly, the Labour party are not able to discover what they are. The Prime Minister is said to have claimed:
	"I have taken from my party everything they thought they believed in. I have stripped them of their core beliefs. What keeps it together is success and power".
	We still have another year of a governing party not knowing what it believes in, dithering and drift, and that is all the more disconcerting as there are clearly a number of important issues that require immediate attention.
	On foreign policy, at a meeting of Members of both Houses in another place last week, his royal highness King Abdullah of Jordan observed that, in 2007, he saw the prospect of three civil wars in the middle east: in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. I was one of those on the Conservative Benches who voted against the war on Iraq because, as a lawyer, I believed the way in which the war was prosecuted to be contrary to international law. There has been no pleasure in seeing the situation in Iraq persistently deteriorate. According to a report in  The Lancet, the death toll in Iraq since the coalition invasion is now over 655,000. That is one in 40 of the Iraqi population. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died at the hands of coalition troops, sectarian death squads and insurgent bombers. Our troops, through no fault of their own, are failing to stop the sectarian killing. Even the head of the British Army, Sir Richard Dannatt, believes that the presence of coalition troops, far from keeping a lid on the fighting, is making the security situation worse.
	One of the epitaphs of the Government will be the Iraq war, an ill-judged invasion fought on misleading and wrong assumptions that gave way to a chaotic occupation. Little wonder that the Prime Minister does not wish to subject himself, and his Government's policy on Iraq, to the scrutiny of an independent commission. But it is bizarre that he is willing to share his thoughts on future policy on Iraq with the United States' Iraq study group, but not willing to submit those ideas to the scrutiny of this House. The doctrine of unripe time prevails here, but seemingly not in the United States. It is all sadly indicative of the fact that the Prime Minister has allowed UK foreign policy to be determined all too often in Washington rather than here.
	The Foreign Office has been emasculated; "inaudible, invisible, incompetent" was how one Foreign Office official described the Foreign Secretary recently. The reality is that Foreign Office Ministers have been reduced to the role of meeters and greeters and that Foreign Office officials are all too often ignored by the Prime Minister.
	What is required is a reappraisal of policy towards the middle east as a whole. The Prime Minister was right in his Mansion house speech earlier this week to acknowledge that there needs to be a renewed effort to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict if there is to be any hope for wider peace in the middle east, including Iraq. The Government have also recognised the need to engage with Iran and Syria. The difficulty with treating countries as pariah states is that it simply encourages them to behave as pariah states. We should never disengage from countries in the world and we need to engage constructively with Iran and Syria.
	The failure in Iraq has ramifications elsewhere. It has undermined the moral authority of our intervention in Afghanistan, which was clearly in support of legitimate UN resolutions and a democratically elected Karzai Government. In September, the Secretary of State for Defence was obliged to acknowledge that the Government grossly underestimated the strength of the Taliban in Afghanistan. All too often our armed forces are being asked to do more whilst given less; tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are unable to intervene elsewhere.
	The Prime Minister this afternoon talked about Darfur. In Darfur, the scene is set for the first genocide of the 21st century. I weep for Darfur; it is difficult for those of us who have visited Darfur, such as myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan), to describe the miles and miles of pathetic encampments of thousands and thousands of displaced families, women and children.
	Who doubts that, given the opportunity, the combined forces of the Sudanese army and the Janjaweed militia intend to resume their campaign against villages in Darfur that has left 300,000 dead and 2 million homeless? Innocent people are being terrorised and murdered in Darfur with impunity.
	There is another dimension to this. The Sudanese Government know that UN motions critical of their conduct are likely to be vetoed by China, which is determined to access Sudanese oil supplies. That reinforces our need to engage more deeply with China. As one of the vice-chairmen of the all-party China group, I am often concerned that we seem to have only two approaches to China; either total criticism, as in Tiananmen, Tibet and human rights, or a sort of sycophancy inspired by a desire to access China's markets.
	We must not forget that the Chinese economy is growing so fast that it is responsible for a third of global economic growth. But as comments by EU Commissioner Peter Mandelson the other day underlined, we have to tackle the trade gap with China and there are a host of issues on which we need a much more sophisticated engagement with China.
	One of those issues, on which we have to engage also with India, is climate change. If Britain ceased all carbon dioxide emissions overnight, the benefits would be wiped out in just over two years by the growth of China. At a recent parliamentarians' conference organised by Globe International, the vice-chairman of the Environment Protection and Resources Conservation Committee of the National People's Congress observed that
	"though China's economy grows fast, China is still a developing country. In rural China 200 million people live in absolute poverty, defined as having a per capita income of less than US$1 per day. It is only possible to tackle and resist the challenges caused by the changing of the natural environment by raising its own development levels."
	Therein lies an important conundrum on climate change. Developing countries such as India and China see no reason why their development should be frozen, but if we, globally, do not together tackle climate change, it is the poor and developing countries who will suffer most. If greenhouse gas emissions are not checked, as the Stern report makes clear, temperatures could rise by up to 5° C by 2050, an increase on the same scale as between now and the last ice age. This would lead to droughts, floods, water shortages, rising sea levels and declining crop yields, all of which would hurt the poorest countries most, not least because they have less capacity to mitigate the damage of climate change, as the International Development Committee, which I chaired in the last Parliament, set out in a comprehensive report on climate change and development, which the Stern report clearly reinforces and underlines.
	Of course Britain must play its full part in tackling climate change and it is very welcome that my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) has committed the Conservative party to supporting a tough regime of annual targets to cut greenhouse gases. The Opposition today have published a Bill that would hand considerable powers to an independent panel of business people and academics.
	I am glad to see that the Conservative party has set out detailed proposals. The Bill will set out overall targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions by at least 60 per cent by 2050. The draft legislation would set up a climate change commission to set annual targets six years in advance and monitor the Government's progress in meeting them. Additional targets would be set for 2015, 2020, 2030 and 2040. Ministers would be obliged to set out a strategy to Parliament on which MPs would vote, and would make an annual report to the House.
	The point of the Opposition draft Bill is to seek to change the mindset of Westminster and Whitehall. By contrast, the Government in the Gracious Speech have not actually published a climate change Bill. They have promised one, but it looks as if it will not be published until next month at the earliest and could well be delayed until early next year, as the Cabinet apparently continues to squabble about how tough the Bill should be.

Tony Baldry: No. With respect, I know that other hon. Members want to speak.
	I am not sure that the Government have got it. They have an unrivalled opportunity on climate change. There is now overwhelming cross-party support for new legislation to cut UK carbon dioxide emissions by at least 3 per cent. every year. We have to hope that Ministers will seize the opportunity presented by this consensus and will make the UK a world example in developing a low carbon economy.
	Apart from the Iraq war, the other defining characteristic of the Government has been repressive legislation. I suspect that future students of the Blair Government will see the Iraq war and repressive legislation as their hallmarks. The Government have introduced no fewer than 23 Bills on criminal justice; again, they simply do not get it. People are fed up with the Home Secretary talking tough but changing nothing. My constituents want real police officers doing real policing, and they want the police to have the numbers and resources to respond effectively.
	However, one slightly loses the will to live when there is a Home Secretary who trumpets in today's newspaper that he wants
	"to move away from the traditional view that justice has to involve going to court."
	What has happened to the Government's, and the Labour party's, belief in civil liberties? They want to privatise the Probation Service and give the police even wider powers without the scrutiny of the courts. Let us have less tough talk on crime and more straightforward policing in which our communities have confidence.
	On identity cards, I simply do not understand the situation. We will have biometric passports; if one wants to prove one's identity, one can simply produce a biometric passport. So what is the point of having an ID card, unless carrying it is going to be compulsory? To put that another way, will it be a criminal offence not to carry one's ID card? Otherwise, what is the point of having an ID card?
	On the issue of 28 days' detention, the Prime Minister and Treasury Front-Bench Members have simply not replied to the questions put by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) and other Members throughout today's debate. Where is the evidence that 28 days' detention is not working? Where is the evidence that Ministers need it to be possible for people to be detained longer for questioning? Why is the Labour party suddenly wishing to be so cavalier with our civil liberties in this country?
	Of course, I welcome a number of things in the Queen's Speech. Let me mention the White Paper paving the way for the abolition of the Child Support Agency, which has been a complete nightmare. There are about 30,000 unresolved cases. Any formula-based system is always going to lead to problems. One of the problems with the CSA is that there has been no means of resolving by adjudication disputes that arise on fact. All Members have got interminable CSA cases in their constituency caseload, but most of them revolve around disputes about fact. There needs to be some mechanism to resolve those disputes. I welcome the reform of the CSA.
	I also welcome the overhaul of the pension system. I hope that particular attention will be given to women pensioners, and I think that everyone welcomes the determination to restore the link between pensions and earnings.
	Some Bills are noticeably missing, such as the much-vaunted marine protection Bill. As a former fisheries Minister—which is slightly bizarre, as I represent one of the most inland constituencies in the country—I am disappointed that the Government have abandoned the Bill on marine preservation. That demonstrates their somewhat half-hearted approach to green issues. When a proposal does not look particularly sexy, they simply abandon it.
	The truth is that the Queen's Speech demonstrates that the Prime Minister has stayed in office for too long. It is not a Queen's Speech that amounts to a legacy. The Prime Minister's era is over, and yet he presses for a few more miserable months. In the meantime, the rest of us are left simply waiting for Gordon.

Andrew Robathan: It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), under whose chairmanship I served on the International Development Committee. He made some excellent points, and his speech was wide ranging and sensible; I would be expected to say that, but I mean it as well.
	Starting from where my hon. Friend left off, let me say that this is an extraordinary Queen's Speech debate because, as far as Labour Members are concerned, the most enormous elephant is sitting in the Chamber. It is an elephant to which they do not refer, because they talk about the Queen's Speech as though everything in it will happen, but we know that the Prime Minister will not be in post to implement it. If the Chancellor takes over from him, what guarantee do we have that he will implement policies proposed by his predecessor, with whom, famously, he does not get on well?
	The tenor of the speeches has been extraordinary. No Labour Member has referred to the fact that the Prime Minister is going, and yet we all know that he will go—indeed, some of those Labour Members were involved in coup attempts to get rid of him. Sitting next to the Prime Minister was that well-known pugilist and philanderer, the Deputy Prime Minister, who now has no credibility whatever, either in this nation or internationally, when he floats around the world trying to persuade the North Koreans to give up nuclear weapons. What a joke that is. Next to him, the Chancellor of the Exchequer sat chuntering as he has been waiting to become Prime Minister for many years. If he takes over, he might make a great Prime Minister, although I somewhat doubt it. But I am sure that he will not put forward all the policies of the current Prime Minister, so one might well ask: why are we having this Queen's Speech debate in the current form, anyway?
	I hope not to talk for too long, because we have had some rather lengthy and verbose contributions. I shall first turn to an issue that the Prime Minister would, I think, like to have as his legacy: health. I just wish to get on the record a few things about health in Leicestershire. I have had occasion this year to use the national health service more than ever before in my life, and I should say that, generally, I was pretty well treated, although I am now waiting until January for something that I was prescribed to go for in a 10-minute interview in September.
	I sometimes wonder whether the Prime Minister is divorced from reality when he talks about the health service. I have seen it in action, and I know what is good and what is bad. Does he have no constituents who write to him, as mine in Leicestershire do? One such constituent is having to wait one year for an MRI— magnetic resonance imaging—scan in the Coventry Walsgrave hospital. Perhaps the Prime Minister has not heard about waiting times of one year. Or what about the man I spoke to yesterday? I will not mention his name; he needs a minor operation under local anaesthetic—a circumcision—but it is a pretty important operation for that man, I can say. He went for a pre-operation meeting yesterday. He has been waiting for 18 months since his GP told him that he had to have that operation. He does not know about targets or referrals to consultants. What he knows is that he has had to wait 18 months since he saw his GP, who said that he had to have the operation.
	I have not had to wait a long time for my hip operations in London—at the Chelsea and Westminster hospital—and I was well treated, for which I pay tribute to my consultant and others, who pushed me through. But I was also very embarrassed, just before I went into my second operation in July, to get a letter from an elderly constituent who had been given a year's wait for a hip operation—it might have been just under a year, to be accurate. I can promise Members that these ailments hurt, and yet people are having to wait for their operations. What world does the Prime Minister live in, because he does not live in the same world as most of us?
	There are five or so Home Office Bills in the Queen's Speech. I am not quite sure about this so I hope that the House will forgive me for asking the question: have there been 50 or 57 Home Office Bills since 1997? I have been told that there have been 57.  [Interruption.] The Minister says that crime is falling. What world does he live in? He should come to my constituency, and I will show him a few things.
	Who would be a judge, having to keep track of all those laws? That is incredibly difficult. Are there 3,000 new criminal offences? I am told that there are. That is unbelievable. What has been achieved? We hear about antisocial behaviour orders. The Minister might remember a report of two weeks ago that said that nearly half of all ASBOs have been broken and that young thugs wear them as a badge of honour. That was not the intention, was it? Let him come to Broughton Astley or Whetstone in my constituency where groups of up to 200 young people—most of them, frankly, probably perfectly nice but bored youngsters—gather with alcohol, so there is under-age drinking, and often with drugs, which means that there is illegality, and cause a lot of what can only be termed low-level crime and antisocial behaviour. ASBOs have not worked. Let us persevere with them by all means, but let us not pretend that they are a panacea for solving antisocial behaviour, because they most certainly have not been. After 57 Home Office Bills, we hear that the prisons are full—or creaking, so they are just about full—and I am sorry to tell the Minister that violent crime is growing, which is pretty extraordinary.
	The Gracious Speech refers to what will be the sixth immigration Bill since 1997, apparently. If I may, I shall quote from it:
	"A Bill will be introduced to provide the immigration service with further powers to police the country's borders"—
	I think that that was our policy at the last general election—
	"tackle immigration crime"—
	that was our policy—
	"and to make it easier to deport those who break the law."
	Well, that all sounds very good, but the truth is that the immigration service is in complete chaos. The Government's own figures reveal that nearly 200,000 people settled legally in this country last year, and if we count "illegals", the figure is probably well over 200,000. A little bit of maths enables anybody to work out that in a decade, if we continue at this rate, we will have to build two cities the size of Birmingham. We should not view that with equanimity, and we certainly should have a proper debate on this issue, which my constituents are concerned about—as, I suspect, are every Member's.
	Reference is also made in the Queen's Speech to deportation. Good—I am glad that we are going to deport people. Was not Abu Hamza meant to be deported to face trial in the US? However, something was said about his human rights. We all think that human rights are important, but this Government, who introduced the Human Rights Act 1998, have made the term almost a dirty word. The whole concept of human rights has been discredited, because, as we know perfectly well, that Act has not worked as the Government or anybody else intended. For instance, under the terms of the European convention on human rights, we disapprove of and do not support capital punishment. Does the House know that the British Government would not provide evidence to the Iraqi authorities in prosecuting Saddam Hussein, because he was likely to face the death penalty—a point that has been proven by parliamentary questions that I have asked of the Government? So we send an Army to war in Iraq and lose some 120 soldiers in tragic circumstances, yet we will not help the elected Government of Iraq to prosecute the tyrant whom we went there to depose. This is a very sad matter.
	Climate change has been discussed well, although sometimes at too great a length. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) made a very good point, but he rather spoilt his argument by being over-long. My own view is that this is almost certainly the greatest problem that our nation and this world faces, and our children will certainly have to face it much more. We need to work at protecting the environment, so let us do so. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition made some very good points in that regard.
	However, perhaps we are going to have more of the rhetoric not backed up by facts that we have had in the past. The EU emissions trading scheme has been central to the Government's plans for cutting carbon emissions in this country. Last Thursday, the Carbon Trust, a Government-funded body, said:
	"The EU emissions trading scheme has had no meaningful effect"
	across Europe. I am not making a party political point. This is very worrying—for all of us; we have to get our act together. On this, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West and I agree entirely: we must take action now. It is not good enough to say that we will take action in 10 years' time. It is probably already too late to save a lot of things that we all hold dear.
	I turn to Iraq, where five UK soldiers were tragically killed in the past week. I do not want to dwell on this; however, we all feel for their families. There was nothing on Iraq in the Queen's Speech. I totally agree with what my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) said about Iraq. Is it so unreasonable that we should subject the Government to scrutiny on their strategy in Iraq? We need to have a sensible review of what we are doing in Iraq and what we are trying to achieve. The Baker commission, which has received evidence from our own Prime Minister, is taking place in the United States. Why are we not allowed to discuss the issue in this House of Commons? To ask that we do so is not unreasonable.
	It has been said that such scrutiny would undermine troops' morale. I was in the Army for 15 years, and never once did a soldier say to me, " 'Ere, sir, do you know what those people said in  'Ansard yesterday?" I know that soldiers would expect us to show political leadership and to discuss the reasons they are risking their lives in dangerous circumstances. They would be very unhappy about the—I regret to say—slavish and blind way in which we have followed the US lead. I am not calling for withdrawal, but we need to reassure our soldiers about why they are risking their lives.
	The same is true in Afghanistan. I support our presence there, which is absolutely essential, but something has gone awry. We were told only a month ago not to worry, because we have been fighting so well that the Taliban are just about defeated. I could quote the brigadier who said it, but I do not want to incur his wrath. We have read about the Taliban's receiving a bloody nose. There have been reports—ill advised—that perhaps 700 Taliban were killed in a particular engagement, which leads us to ask how many there were in the first place. I question those claims and wonder whether we have given the Taliban any sort of bloody nose. We might have killed a lot of people, but I fear that a lot more recruits are coming out. Indeed, a lengthy report on the BBC news on Monday suggested that the Taliban were far from defeated.
	Our soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq deserve real political leadership. They deserve to know exactly what they are fighting for. In Afghanistan, is it for reconstruction or for development? Is the fight against the drugs trade or in support of the democratically elected Afghan Government? What exactly is the aim? That is what we need to address as politicians.
	I question our political aims, because I think that they are confused. Our strategy is slightly confused, although I would not criticise David Richards, with whom I was at staff college. On the same front, I would not criticise people's tactics, but I have read reports that give me great cause for concern. Soldiers are quoted as saying that it seemed as though we were taking part in a drugs war and siding with just one of the drugs barons. That is not what we have sent soldiers to Afghanistan to do. Soldiers have been dying there, so it is important that we are clear about what we are doing.
	It is not for politicians to dictate tactics, but such stories are disturbing. We must be cautious in what we do in Afghanistan. We must not follow the example of Soviet forces and British forces of the past into the morass of Afghanistan. We should speak softly, but we should carry a bigger stick. We need more troops, who should be NATO troops. We need more helicopters if we are to operate as we have been operating, and more support in general. My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Milton Keynes (Mr. Lancaster) was in Afghanistan only last month and has some interesting things to say—although not now, as he is sitting on the Front Bench as a Whip.
	Europe was not mentioned in the Queen's Speech, but Germany is taking over the presidency of the EU in January and Chancellor Merkel has said that she is going to revive the EU constitution. It therefore might be pertinent to consider in this Session what is happening in Europe and what the Government's position will be on the constitution. We cannot just ignore it and pretend that it will go away.
	Finally, I should like to mention spin. Last week I read a newspaper report that announced that Labour would raise the school leaving age to 18. I do not know whether that is in the proposed education legislation, but perhaps the Minister could enlighten me on whether that is true. If so, is that really what the country wants, or is the proposal just a newspaper report?

David Amess: My hon. Friend slightly embarrasses me, because I was the first Member in the House to propose an ID card system for the country, in a Bill that I introduced under the ten-minute rule, but mine was a voluntary system. However, I will not be distracted by the subject to which he draws my attention.
	The next point in the Gracious Speech is the Home Office Bills. It beggars belief that the Government should have the absolute cheek to bring forward more Home Office legislation. We have a Home Secretary who admits that the Home Office is in an absolute shambles, and all of us can remember one particular Minister, who no longer holds responsibility for the police, who was always on TV looking pleased with herself, announcing, with yet another silly soundbite, another silly strategy or silly measure that everyone knew would not work. What has gone on in the Home Office is an absolute disgrace. This country used to have the finest police force in the world and the finest judicial system in the world. They were the envy of the world. Sadly, today our police force and our judicial system are the same as those in the rest of the world. I blame the Government for that.
	As far as the police are concerned, morale is at rock bottom. We know that the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), and his Minister of State, now the Minister without Portfolio, who were responsible for that no longer hold those positions, but they should come to the Dispatch Box and explain to the House and the country how the arguments that they advanced for the reorganisation of our police forces can simply be thrown aside. Everyone knows why the policy was abandoned—because people and police forces up and down the country were against it. It is a disgrace that £4 million will be spent bailing out our hard-pressed police forces because of the cost of the consultation work on the amalgamation. Essex faces a bill of £169,000, and we have only £100,000. Do the former Home Secretary and the former Minister of State with responsibility for the police think that the House and the country will forget their incompetence? What went on was an absolute disgrace.
	Morale in the police force is at rock bottom because of the fiasco that the Home Office sadly is today. We are told in the Gracious Speech that we are to give the police and the probation service new powers to protect the public from violent offenders and antisocial behaviour. This Prime Minister wrings his hands as if he has not been in charge of the Government since 1997. This Prime Minister made his name when he was shadow Home Secretary as being tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. Yet for the past 10 years, law and order has fallen apart. I blame one person and one person alone—this Prime Minister.
	We are also told in the Gracious Speech that the Government will provide
	"the immigration service with further powers to police the country's borders, tackle immigration crime, and to make it easier to deport those who break the law."
	I am under the impression that the Prime Minister is suffering from the medical condition—I suspect it is untreatable—of delusion. It is a bit late to start worrying about the immigration and asylum system that we have now. It is a pity that the Government did not do something about it when Opposition Members warned them what was happening five or 10 years ago. The immigration and asylum system is a shambles. The Government say that the immigration service is going to police the country's borders and tackle immigration crime, but it is too late.
	I know someone who is being detained in Chelmsford prison, and perhaps the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, the hon. Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), will pass my comments on to a Home Office Minister. I know that person because he happens to be a friend of my son, but he is a constituent of the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes), who knows all about the problem and is trying to work as quickly as he can to sort it out.
	This Bangladeshi boy should have been released on Friday. He was convicted for a motoring offence and has been in prison for, I think, two or three months. To quote the expression, "He's done his time." When various people went to collect him from Chelmsford prison on Friday, they waited and they waited, but he was not released. Now the immigration department has moved in and is questioning his right to be in the United Kingdom. That poor lad came as a child to the United Kingdom in 1994. No sooner had he arrived, than his mother and then his dad died. Next, his stepmother abandoned him and his brother in Chelmsford and disappeared with their passports. It does the Government no credit that he is still in Chelmsford prison through no fault of his own. The Government talk about joined-up government, and it is a travesty of that Bangladeshi boy's human rights that the issue was not sorted out before he was due for release on Friday. The hon. Member for Ilford, South is working as hard as he possibly can on the issue, but I would be grateful if the Minister were to pass on the matter to one of his colleagues in the Home Office.
	The Gracious Speech states that the Government will improve
	"qualifications for judicial appointment and the enforcement of judgments."
	The first point fills me with great alarm, given this Government's track record. At the moment, there is a serious police investigation about the sale of peerages, and it is simply not good enough if friends are investigating each other.
	We have heard a great deal today about climate change. Those of us who have been Members of Parliament since the '80s can remember how popular environmental issues were then—environmental issues were not invented in 2006. In the '80s, the Green party polled extremely well in European elections, and my party began to take the issue very seriously—eventually, we had the Kyoto treaty. I have done my bit: I was fortunate enough to pilot the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000 as a result of being lucky in the ballot for private Members' Bills, and I believe that it is making a contribution. I am delighted that there is a climate change Bill, but unless—dare I say it—the world follows our lead, it will be of little significance.
	The Gracious Speech mentions the long-term reform of pensions. As my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) has said, Conservative Members welcome such reform, but the country will not forget the actions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is soon to be Prime Minister, who raided pension funds to the tune of £5 billion in his first Budget. The whole problem started in the Chancellor's very first Budget.
	I am delighted that there will be free off-peak local bus travel for pensioners and disabled people, but it will be no use whatsoever in Southend, because we do not have any buses. Thanks to this Government, 20,000 people were left off the register in the census in Southend, so we receive funding for 20,000 fewer people than live in the constituency. Bus subsidies have gone, and my constituency, which contains the most senior citizens out of any in the country, has few bus services to enjoy. That particular proposal in the Gracious Speech will not cheer up my constituents.
	As my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Evennett) has said, as far as educational reform
	"to raise standards in schools to help all children achieve their full potential"
	is concerned, the last thing that teachers want is any more changes. There has been great controversy about standards generally, and I am not sure how well any further legislation will go down with the teaching profession.
	We welcome the modernisation of health care, given all the money that has been spent in the health service, but frankly what is going on at the moment with closures of hospitals, and not only new staff no longer being recruited but existing staff being made redundant, is very regrettable.
	I am delighted that there will be
	"a better framework for treating people with mental disorders",
	because mental health care in this country has always been the Cinderella service. As a member of the Health Committee, I can tell the Government that they need to get on with that framework now. We have been waiting eight years for this measure, and they need to handle it with great care.
	Then we are told that the Government will
	"reform the regulation of human embryology."
	Those of us who were in the House when we legislated on this matter previously have no confidence whatever in what goes on with frozen embryos. We have great concerns about the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority generally, and I hope that if the Government produce legislation on this issue, they will take into account the fact that just over a year ago the three party leaders said that it was unsustainable that we have special baby care units throughout the country keeping babies alive at 23 weeks and 23 and a half weeks and yet nothing is done about the time limits on abortion. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries) introduced a ten-minute Bill on this issue and found that the House was not moved in favour of her proposal, but I think she was entirely genuine and I support her proposal to reduce the number of weeks at which an abortion can be performed.
	We are told in the Gracious Speech that there will be legislation
	"to tackle road congestion and to improve public transport";
	all of that I welcome.
	As for reforming the planning system, local authorities now have very few powers in planning matters. I was once a councillor in Redbridge when we had real power. Is it not a farce that most local authorities shrug their shoulders and ask, "What is the point of opposing anything? It goes to appeal. We cannot afford the money to be represented at appeal and we always get our view overturned"?
	Then the Government have slipped in proposals for
	"improved arrangements for consumer advocacy and for the regulation of estate agents",
	but I say to my hon. Friends, did we not earlier in the year have a Minister do a complete about-turn on this issue? Yet again we are treated as though we have all forgotten it and the measure is slipped into the Gracious Speech.
	Then we are told that the Government will
	"build a consensus on reform of the House of Lords".
	Of course the Government could not build a consensus on anything, and the thing that they are least capable of is building a consensus on reform of the House of Lords. They should never have messed up the House of Lords in the first place if they did not have a clear vision of what it should look like if they got their way. It is now a complete and absolute shambles, and I for one will not support an elected second Chamber that is in competition with the House.
	We are then told that the Government are going to reform local government. God help us. They have taken all the powers away from local government already; everything is controlled centrally. Local government is becoming no more than a talking shop, but the Government tell us that they plan to reform it and to give
	"enhanced powers for the Mayor and Assembly for London."
	I have tried to raise in the House the issue of bendy buses, because I have always felt that they were a disaster waiting to happen. But of course this House has no powers in that regard, so why are the Government to give more powers to this particular Mayor, of whom I am certainly not a supporter?
	What made my hon. Friends listening to the Gracious Speech in the other place laugh the most was the idea that the Government were going
	"to create an independent board to enhance confidence in Government statistics".
	For goodness' sake, they must think that we are absolutely stupid. This Government fiddle statistics morning, noon and night and presumably, at the end, they will produce some system whereby everything will look a lot better than it actually is.
	In common with other hon. Members, I end by commenting on the situation in Iraq. Until the day I die, I will regret that I ever voted for the war with Iraq. I wish that I had had the wisdom of my 16 colleagues—two of whom have spoken before me today—who voted against the war. I am not a military expert, but on the Opposition side, many of my colleagues possess great expertise in such matters. I listened to what the Prime Minister said, and I believed it! I really thought that Iraq had the capability to deploy weapons of mass destruction that could be aimed towards Europe and at this country.
	What is more, I would not be prepared for any of my children to come home in body bags and coffins and I wonder whether the Prime Minister and the President of the USA would be. We pay tribute to the men and women who have been killed in active service and then we move on. I believe that this war is a total and absolute disaster and the arrogance of the Government is incredible. In America, the Government have no choice but to do something about it now, as they have lost control of Congress and the Senate. Yesterday we received an insult to the House from the Prime Minister when he participated in a video link, giving his views on the war. For goodness' sake, it was he who gave briefings and information about the need for war to the then leaders of the Conservative and Liberal parties, and we were advised to vote accordingly. I feel that I have personally let my constituents down on this issue. I will always regret that I voted for the war with Iraq.
	It is beyond belief that the Government have no exit strategy whatever. They simply do not have a clue what to do. Three Iraqis came to see me at my last surgery and they told me—they are in constant contact with their relatives—that the situation in Iraq today is much, much, much worse than it was before we removed Saddam Hussein. Frankly, it is an absolute disgrace and I have no confidence whatever that the Government will sort it out.
	I believe that this is a dreadful and rotten Government. We have heard much about the legacy of this Prime Minister. I think that he will be viewed in the history books as a highly successful politician, but he will not be seen as a great leader or great Prime Minister. Most damning of all, he will leave office with the standing of this country that I love greatly diminished.

Ian Gibson: We can tell that the debate is serious because no one is in the Chamber except the Minister and me. That is a good omen that something will happen in the future, which is what I want from the debate.
	I want to raise the issue because it is clear that the police and judges in western countries agree that the advent of genetic testing is a revolutionary development, much more so than fingerprinting, which came in at the end of the 19th century. It is impossible now to say that a criminal disappeared without leaving a trace. Even if he or she wore gloves, it would be possible to trace them by using new technology, and I want to explain that point.
	Forensic science made that leap forward in 1985 when a British scientist, Alec—now Sir Alec—Jeffreys, of Leicester university, discovered a new way of identifying people within a few hours using the molecule deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA for short. I say a few hours, but that took days at the time. The technology is developing all the time. Scene of crime identification—picking up the DNA and identifying the individual—can now be done in a matter of minutes. We are taking this seriously. Britain being ahead in anything these days is good news, and encouraging such a situation underlies this debate.
	These pieces of DNA can be obtained from all sorts of sources: minute specks of blood; single hairs; a trace of saliva left on a cigarette butt; a stamp; a glass; a toothbrush; sweat on clothing; and, more importantly, a tiny drop of a rapist's sperm. Despite the fact that people think that such things are proof, they just identify that an individual has been at the scene of a crime and do not necessarily mean that the individual is guilty of the crime. Being there does not provide the necessary legal identification.
	This is what it is all about. I took this from a member of the Cabinet who had touched a glass of orange and put it down. I purloined the glass and took the DNA off it. I went back to a laboratory that I used to work in and identified that individual. I am sure that I could get £1 million—

Ian Gibson: I am sorry that I have used a visual aid, but I thought that it would help the debate amazingly well.
	This is a DNA analysis. I took a small piece of DNA from a glass of orange that somebody held. I broke it up into pieces, and these are those pieces. Each individual has a band pattern—like a bar code in a supermarket, I guess, which identifies a particular object—and this identifies the individual. It tells me so much, but even if  The Times offers me £1 million, I will not divulge who the individual is, although it is rather tempting to do so. That is what it is all about. The DNA analysis goes into the computer and a coding relationship is introduced, which allows us to pick something up, identify DNA and match it to what has gone into the computer.
	Such evidence has been used very positively not only in this country, where it has been used a great deal, but in the United States. We have been able to look at prisoners there, some of whom—54 to be exact—were on death row, but were innocent of the rapes of which they had been convicted. When there was an identification of sperm found at the scene of the crime, it did not match that of the individual who had been put away, so DNA, which we might call bar coding, identified the fact that those people were innocent. It is extremely important in being able to do that.
	An amendment to the law in this country made in 2001 allowed us to take DNA samples from individuals who had not necessarily been charged and had only been cautioned. That enabled us to do this kind of bar coding and put it on a database. Some 3.4 million individuals—a small fraction of the population, but growing all the time—are on a database, which is accessible to many different people.
	Is there a benefit in keeping those people on a database? There is a good answer to that from the Home Office, which is true: 8,251 profiles have been matched to 13,749 offences, and they show that some of those individuals whose records have been kept are guilty of previous offences. That is quite a good record and quite enticing in relation to carrying this out.
	I am talking about murderers, attempted murderers, rapists and sex offenders, and those figures relate to the national database in 2005. Such cases are often called cold cases in the press—people look back down the line in terms of taking data to see whether there is an association with crime scene data that are being taken up. This is one of the stories. In 1988, two young girls were raped and sexually abused. In 2001, somebody was picked up for shoplifting and their DNA taken. Blow me, it was seen that the DNA was the same as that picked up in the case involving those young women many years before. There are positive stories about what science, technology and DNA profiling have brought to the crime scene.
	The Government have invested millions of pounds in the programme and we have increased the size of the database in the last five years. There is no universal demand for this kind of thing to be compulsory and no insistence that we must have a database of everybody in this country, but the issue at the minute is, should we be doing this for everybody? That is a fair question.
	If, because of such disparate successes, there is a call for a database to be introduced, we must consider the other side of the argument, and say what problems might arise. In the Queen's Speech debate—as you know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I always link up with previous debates—ID cards were discussed. We are not talking about introducing a DNA database for ID cards, but one can see that there might be an argument for doing that in a different political climate. There is no insistence on it at the moment, but it could happen. That worries many people. We live in a world in which people are worried about terrorism, and one can see the justification for such a database. We also live in a world in which people appeal to civil liberties and ask why such DNA information should be held on them.
	The DNA information can be used not only to locate someone at a crime scene, but for other matters. The DNA bar coding can tell us whether people have type 1 diabetes, for example. This country is also running what is called a biobank—DNA based, again with bar coding—which tells us what genes we have and what we might die of, whether cancer, diabetes or whatever. That worries many people, and I shall deal with why that is so.
	Sir Alec Jeffreys, the father of the industry, has said that the biology used involves something like 10 different genetic markers. He says that that is okay at the moment, but that we ought to develop 16 markers to be absolutely sure, because, as use of the technology increases, the problem of mismatching could become greater. He told the Select Committee of which I am Chairman that only one bad mismatch would be needed to destroy not only the industry but the whole culture around what the technology can do. He asked us to hold back and not consider putting everybody on a database at this stage.
	Another issue is whether we should be allowed to take DNA from people. I did it surreptitiously by taking somebody's glass. I did not abuse the person, and I have not revealed who he is—as I said, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I would never do that. However, one can see how many people could commit abuse by being much more subtle about getting the DNA sample. You will have read about people taking samples from buckets, picking out hairs on documents and so on. That is possible, and dirty tricks can be played. Normally, we do not do that—we take samples of blood, saliva and so on—but one can see how that can be developed, and that worries many people.
	The ownership of samples is also an issue. Private companies take such samples and hold them under police jurisdiction, but there is a real risk that others will get their hands on such information. People worry about insurance companies getting DNA profile information, which tells them what diseases or problems a person might have. Who knows what genetics might be able to tell us about the personalities of individuals and so on? Such information could be very interesting to life insurance companies. In the United States, it is estimated that 6 per cent. of employers use genetic tests as part of job selection procedures, to find out what candidates might be afflicted with, and so on. Large databases have developed in the United States through the collection of samples on the basis of finding out who had died in the Vietnamese war, for example. Those contain a lot of information that could be used.
	People also worry about the management and oversight of such a database agency. They worry, too, that more black and ethnic community individuals are on the database, and that there is a bias in that regard. People are worried about the way in which samples are taken and the state of the DNA. Questions about the database, its growth and the problem of mismatches to which I referred are raised continually.
	Research is showing that DNA can come from different sources. I do not want to get technical, but it can be located in mitochondria—inherited from the mother, for instance. It is possible to discover all sorts of information in that way.
	People ask why samples are retained. The Home Office rightly gives the example of "cold cases", arguing that retained samples make it possible to backtrack and find out what happened years ago, given that people reoffend. Others have said that samples should be retained only in the case of serious and sexual crimes, but there are many other circumstances in which DNA is on the database. We have heard in the Chamber about young people whose DNA is there because they have been impudent, using mobile phones without respect. They have been picked up by the police and not charged, but the legislation allows the DNA to be taken and to lie on the database. That worries people.
	There is also the problem of familial searching. The DNA of an individual under suspicion may not be on the database, but if DNA is taken from the scene of the crime the database may contain the DNA of someone who, ostensibly, is a relative of that individual. The individual may then be told "Although your DNA is not on the database, it is very similar to that of your brother"—or sister, or cousin. People may suddenly find that they have cousins, brothers and sisters of whom they have never heard.
	I know that if I took DNA samples for everyone in the country, establishing what they believed to be their origins and who their parents were, surprises might well emerge in relation to behavioural patterns. Nevertheless, people are worried, and there will be the odd case that newspapers such as the  News of the World would just love to get hold of.
	It is not good enough just to say that there should be as much DNA as possible on the database. There must be a real policy on what the database is for, what its limitations are, what it is good for and what it is bad for, and where we are headed. I think that we are drifting around. We have the biggest DNA database in the world, containing DNA from a larger percentage of people than anywhere else, and the DNA of more and more people is going on to it. We must make it clear to the public why we are taking such action, and what the advantages might be. Many people say that there has not been proper consultation with the public, and certainly there has not been a huge debate in Parliament about the new information that is becoming available. As part of the terrorism debate, it is important for us to have a database and to know its purpose.
	As for the ethical problems, I have suspicions about ethics. Whenever people want to stop something from happening, they form an ethics committee to ensure that it will be difficult for it to happen. It is the fastest-growing industry in the country. I am on five of those committees, and gosh! I do not understand ethics or philosophy, but I do understand that DNA technology can be very important.
	We have a real problem in British society, which emanates from the debate on this subject. We want to stop terrorism. We want to catch terrorists before events happen. We want to pick up evidence. However, we do not want to abandon some of our principles involving what could be described as civil liberties—giving people the right to a possibility that their data will be removed after a certain time, or in some cases will not even be on the database. I am thinking of some of the so-called problems that people may have caused, such as a one-off incident in which a person abuses another on a phone and is picked up by the police. We must be careful not to act willy-nilly, but to act for the right reasons.
	We really do need a proper debate in Parliament; we need to discuss what kind of information we need. It is not just that the newspapers are having a go at it; we need to know what is happening in the context of our politics and our understanding of society. It is not good enough just to say, "Get as many as you can get and put them on the database".
	 It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
	 Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Jonathan Shaw.]

Vernon Coaker: I was going to have a drink of water, but I am a bit worried about what might happen to the glass if I did.
	I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) on securing this debate on the national DNA database. As he says, this is an extremely important debate and this short Adjournment debate gives us the opportunity to discuss the key contribution made by the DNA database to the work of the police and the wider criminal justice system, and the benefits to society as a whole through the detection and prevention of crime. As he says, it gives us the opportunity to think about some of the major issues that arise from the establishment and growth of the national DNA database.
	As hon. Members know, the Prime Minister and the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety were able to visit a forensic laboratory in London recently to see at first hand the remarkable contribution that forensic science is now able to make in the prevention and detection of crime. We as a nation can be justifiably proud of that and the United Kingdom is acknowledged as being the world leader in the use of DNA technology to assist the police. My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North rightly drew attention to the contribution that science makes and to the fact that British science is at the leading edge compared with the rest of the world. We need to pay tribute to the science sector for that.
	Hon. Members may have seen about the same time as that visit headlines in the media asking whether we want to be a nation of citizens or suspects. The fact is that simply being on the DNA database does not make anyone a suspect. What makes someone a suspect is if the police match their DNA profile with that found at a crime scene. Therefore, the question should be: do we want to be a nation that catches the people who commit those appalling crimes?
	As we have said many times, law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear from being on the database. We also need to remember that the database is often effective in eliminating suspects at a very early stage in an inquiry, saving them inconvenience and the police time and resources.
	DNA samples retained under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 may be used only for the purposes of prevention and detection of crime, the investigation of an offence, the conduct of a prosecution, or the identification of a deceased person or of the person from whom the body part came. May I try to reassure my hon. Friend? It is unlawful under the Human Tissue Act 2004 to take someone's DNA and to test it without their knowledge. May I also try to assure him about information? Access to information on the database may be made available only to relevant law enforcement agencies. It is not made available to lawyers or insurance companies.
	The Government firmly believe that the current powers to take and to retain DNA are proportionate and justified in the interests of preventing and detecting crime. As always, the debate is about individual liberty and public protection, and the balance between the two.
	Since the legislation change in 2001 that allowed the police to retain DNA profiles of non-convicted persons, approximately 8,500 profiles of such individuals have been linked with other crime scene stains, including 114 murders, 55 attempted murders, 116 rapes, 68 sexual offences and 119 aggravated burglaries. The House might wish to reflect on the figures and ask whether these crimes would still have been detected had the police not had available to them the match between the person's DNA profile and that found at the scene of the crime.
	Under the Criminal Justice Act 2003, Parliament further extended police powers to enable the police to take and retain DNA from persons who have been arrested for a recordable offence and detained in a police station. It is a fact that the police arrest more people than they charge and we do accept that broadening police powers in this way has civil liberty implications. My hon. Friend raised some of them, and if he wishes to meet me, the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety and the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, North (Joan Ryan) to discuss these matters, we would be only too happy to do so to take forward the debate and discussion.